First Official Run

So remember how I posted that I was going to go lace up my shoes for my first official run yesterday? Well, the second I closed my laptop my phone rang. The caller was the auto body repair shop telling me that my car was ready to be picked up, so I ended up having to deal with that instead of getting my run in before heading over to visit my parents.

So I decided to get the run into today. Unfortunately, it's dark by the time I get home this time of year and I just don't feel safe enough to run alone at night where I live. So, I hopped on my treadmill instead. If I would have done the run yesterday it probably would have been a 'leave it all out on the road' type of run. My intent at least, was to go all in and see just what I was capable of as a gauge for where I'm starting from. However, doing a run at the end of a very long work day is quite different than doing a run in the middle of the afternoon on a lazy day off. And I just didn't have it in me tonight. Also, going all in to test my current limit is going to hurt. Probably a lot. And I don't want to be miserable for the Breast Cancer Walk on Saturday. Tonight feels a little too close to Saturday morning and I know I'd still be sore. So instead, I made it my goal to see if I could run for 30 straight minutes at whatever pace felt doable.

I really didn't push myself too much on the pace, and I'm sure I could probably have gone faster, but an oh so fun new addition to my life the past 5ish years is that I've started having panic attacks. Luckily they are very rare and fairly controllable because the thing that triggers them is when I feel like I can't breathe or when something doesn't feel right with my body. And most of the time I can control or change those triggers.

Not so awesome when it comes to trying to improve my running speed, though.

The last time I tried to test how fast I could run, it ended up triggering a full blown panic attack on a treadmill in the middle of a crowded gym. That was one of the top 3 worst ones I've had. The other two that top the list were in a Bikram Yoga Class and while doing a workout video on You Tube.

Are you sensing a theme here?

It takes me a very long time to mentally recover from a really bad one. (In the case of the Bikram Yoga, I have never been back to another class). So, I REALLY don't want to trigger another bad one while running ever again. If that means I need to run slow as molasses, then so be it.

Anyway, back to the point.

I made it the whole 30 minutes with only a few breaks for water. I've still never mastered the whole running and drinking thing. I choke every single time. I also stupidly was drinking out of a tumbler with a straw in it which felt a bit dangerous to try to drink out of while moving.

I'm not exactly sure how far I ran. My apple watch and my treadmill were about 1/4 mile different. It seems like the treadmill should be more accurate and that was the lesser of the distances. However, the treadmill has also been moved and it has a few weird glitches now so who knows. My apple watch gives splits and data that the teadmill doesn't give, so I guess I'm just going to go with the data from that so I have comparisons going forward.

So here are screen shots from my apple watch for today's run:

I ran for 30 minutes and then walked for 5 minutes to cool down. That mile 2 split is nowhere near accurate unless my treadmill is way off! I know I never bumped the speed up higher than 4.3 mph, which is just under 14 min/mile, so no freaking clue where that came from! But some data is better than no data, I suppose.

Overall, not too shabby considering the last time I ran was in 2020!