couch 2 5k: week 2, day 1 {3.4.2013}

Today was a little rough.

While it the sun was shining, it was in the 40s and windy. I’m not so good breathing in the cold, and especially not when moving into frosty gusts.

Week 2 of the program switched to one minute thirty second intervals of jogging and two minute intervals of walking, combined with five minutes each of warmup and cool down, for a total of 31 minutes. I started pretty strong, if I do say so myself. I noticed that my warm up took me about five houses farther than it had the first three times, so I’m definitely walking faster.

My ipod was also playing more upbeat music, and I think that was adding to my increase in speed. I don’t really pay much attention to what is playing, so long as something is providing background noise. I think I’m going to have to start looking at an actual running soundtrack, to help provide more consistency.

At about halfway through this session, I did have an interval of running directly into the wind current. I’m not going to lie. I struggled. It was extremely discouraging. I had to keep reminding myself that this weather is not the norm, and the two races I have my eye on should not be quite so cold either.

For all that, I didn’t stop. And I didn’t phone it in on the intervals. I did the full times, as instructed, and ended up doing a great job, even if my throat and lungs were burning.

I would have rated this session a neutral face, except I saw that I was averaging less-than-10-minute miles and that kind of made up for the painful breathing thing.

Kind of.

I’m choosing to look at it as a learning experience. It’s probably good to learn how to endure in all kinds of weather conditions, and I know the heat of summer and high humidity is going to be a challenge in a few months.

In other news, I think I’m going to have to go shopping soon. I have been running in leggings, and today, I almost ran out of them. Not as fun as it sounds. It’s a good problem to have.