Day Twenty Five

32 MINUTES STRAIGHT

Did you read that?! STRAIGHT

I decided around lunch time today that I was going to go outside and go for 32 minutes straight. Considering I had basically done it on Saturday, I thought I should at least match that or go for more. I need to get over the mental block of needing to walk for a short while and start up again. It's in my head I know it is, it's not physical at this point.

I did it. I think I can now call myself a "runner". Hahaha that actually did make me laugh out loud and tear up at the same time. We've just joked for so long about high school track and my lack of wanting to exercise that it even sounds weird to me. But being able to run for 32 minutes seems like a runner to me! I think that might be my new favorite label. If I wasn't such a fan of "LP" I'd ask to be called "RL" Runner Leah.

So I do have to say I'm disappointed in RunKeeper. I feel like the area I ran today (around my apartment) should have fairly good GPS. It started with a green dot saying it had good reception or whatever, but there is no way it could have. It has me cutting whole corners and even when I jogged the same way back, it shows I was in the middle of the street at times. It also shows that for 8 of those 32 minutes my pace was "0". Come on. I guarantee you I was moving! I will admit that there was 3 times I had to pause to let a car turn or make sure they weren't going to run me down, but I did run an extra 30 seconds at the end to make up for that. There was no way I paused for 30 seconds even combining those 3 times, but I wanted to make sure I did 32 as straight as possible. Being run over by a car would really wreck the 32 minutes straight concept.

So RunKeeper said I went 2.42 miles in 32 minutes and 30 seconds. When I marked the same route on Google Maps, it said I went 2.6 miles. I'd like to say I'm the type of person who doesn't care about that, but let's be real. Maybe when I'm running 4 or 5 miles, .18 won't bother me. But when I'm trying to get up to 3.1 miles, it really bugs me. I think I'll go with 2.6 as I feel like it's a bit more realistic since when my GPS was good in Seattle I did 2.57 with 30 seconds of walking.

The first 10-12 minutes is very painful. Then it seems to get better. But that first 5 minutes it feels like I've never even walked before. I'm all awkward and my ankles hurt and I feel like I'm very very awkward looking. After 12 minutes I still want to stop, but I think it's all mental. My body feels much better and I feel far less awkward. Running outside is getting better than the treadmill now too. It provides me with distractions and I think eventually it will be quite a bit better. Right now there isn't enough distraction in the world to get my mind off of it when it is tough. But at least outside keeps the mediocre toughness at bay. I think I'll try and run outside as much as possible now.