Day Six

OUTSIDE!

Holy cow. First run outside.

I woke up this morning and while laying in bed I decided to look at the App Store on my iPhone. I've been stressing about running outside and how to time myself so I can still follow my plan. I've been looking at $50+ watches, etc. Low and behold, there's an app for that. I downloaded for $2.99 the "Couch to 5K" app. Has all the workouts on it with voices to tell you when to walk/run/cooldown etc. I can choose male or female (I went male... "tougher" sounding coach I guess!). You can listen to your own music and it just tells you over the music. I was so excited I pretty much jumped out of bed.

I ate some breakfast and sang "I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it" while getting ready. You're a child of the 90's if you picture Jessie singing that to Zack as he's confronting her on her addiction to caffeine pills on Saved by the Bell :). I was also hoping that there would be no overweight shirtless male mowing his lawn telling people they prance.

Heading out the door I grabbed kleenexs which turned out to be ingenious of me. I put my earphone cord through my shirt (I saw the cool people doing it) and even figured out how to tie my apt key to my shoelaces. Speaking of tying shoes... did you know there is a "right" and "wrong" way to tie shoes?! I learned that while I was researching types of shoes. My shoe lace bows always went the wrong way instead of laying nicely as they do in the commercials. Look what the internet can do for us! Now I have perfect little bows on my shoes.

Overall the run was not harder, it was the additional elements the great outdoors added to the experience that sucked. My ears and nose were the largest problems. My nose was running like a faucet, thank god I had at least 3 kleenexs... will need to bring more next time. No wonder I see runners snotting into the grass... gross... I don't think I'll be able to do that. However that was causing my ears to plug up and they were already freezing. Add to that my earbuds don't stay in very well and I was constantly messing with my ears. They throbbed when I got back to the apartment and I had a horrible headache. I think I need to get one of those headbands... should solve the earbud problem and the cold problem. Dang I have to go shopping ;)

Downside of running outside... I don't truly know how far I ran. I tried to do the mapmyrun.com thing beforehand and made a route that was about 1.27 miles. I figured I wouldn't go as far since it was supposed to be harder outside. Well I ended up straying off my path and making little loops around the blocks cause it wasn't long enough. So my guess is I did just about the 1.55 I've been doing or maybe more. I think I probably jogged faster at first cause of the adrenaline. I didn't get lost, which those who know me is actually a large concern for me. I do have GPS on my phone though, so figured I'd be ok in a friendly neighborhood.

About how cool I was tying my key to my shoelaces. I got back to the apartment, bent down to untie my shoe and gracefully pulled the wrong string so it got all tangled. Of course it's dark by my door and I didn't have contacts/glasses. I started giggling to myself thinking, oh crap this is embarrassing. Neighbor Tim is going to come out here and think I'm crazy. Finally just had to take my shoe off so I could get it close enough to see it. Hahaha still making me giggle.

Hmm... we'll see if I do this next Saturday. Need to prepare myself better I think. Suggestions welcome.