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My back was very sore and tight when I got up this morning. Not sure if it’s from the running, or if I slept wrong. Either way, I decided that I needed to workout anyway so not to get in the habit of making excuses.

Did one of my Firm workouts this a.m. The Firm: Resistance Bands, it’s one of the new ones, and one of my favorites. It’s quick and easy with only one piece of equipment. I decided yesterday that I needed to start adding my strength training back into my workouts in order to really up things a notch in terms of looking better. This will be the first week that I’m back to cardio and strength training.

Tomorrow, it’s the beginning of Week 3 in the C25K….I’ll be doing my first 3 minute run. I’m a little nervous about it even though the 90 second ones weren’t bad, but this is TWICE the amount.

Two weeks ago, I came across a post on WWers forums talking about the Couch to 5 K Program on www.coolrunning.com. I have wanted to “become a runner,” for as long as I can remember. In fact, I’ve frequently had dreams where I’m running through the woods, not trying to get away from anything, just running for the joy of it. When I’d wake up this feeling of freedom would stick with me, but I could never replicate the running in real life. The C25K program looked awesome because it combines short intervals of running with recovery walking, slowly building up the amount of time that you are running and decreasing the amount of time that you are walking until at the end of nine weeks, you’re running for a full 30 minutes. The program requires about 30 minutes a day, 3 days a week.

Week One: Was SO excited to get started. This week was walking for 5 minutes followed by 1 minute of running followed by 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes, then I added on a 5 minute cool down. Couldn’t believe that I was actually running…and NOT dying. Now, granted, it was only for 60 seconds at a time, but I WAS RUNNING!!Week Two: Ok, time to up things a bit. This week was five minutes of walking followed by 90 seconds of running followed by 2 minutes of walking for the 20 minutes then 5 minute cool-down. Day 1 went great, but I got sick the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and ended up missing my run on Wednesday and Friday. Got my still sick butt to the gym on Saturday though (very proud of myself for that!), and got my Week2 Day2 run in. This one HURT…BAD! I fought for every step, had to pull my speed back a bit both in the walking and the running portion…even had to throw an extra walk interval into the middle…but I DID IT!

Today I finished Week 2 with the Day3 run. I ROCKED today! I took an extra five minutes at the beginning to warm up my walk VERY slowly, stopped the treadmill, stretched my calves well, then actually started the 30 minutes of the workout. Started my 5 minute walk all the way up at 3.4 mph, and managed to keep my walking speed there the entire time. I also managed to keep the running speed at 4.2 mph. This was my “fastest” pace yet, in fact, I logged in under 17 min/mile for the first time, and covered 1.92 miles in the 30 minutes.

I’m very excited about this program, and have set some long-term goals for myself. There is a 5K run in New Bedford on 2/11/07, my initial goal is to run in that race. My long term goal is to be able to start running cross country and be able to reproduce my dreams in real-life. I’ll keep updating this blog with how things are going.