I No Longer Recall

I don't remember anymore just when I made this. I know that the second post was at the end of November so... sometime before then.

I finally figured out I might as well use this as a running blog, since that takes up a good deal of my attention and I never really feel up to posting about it in my LiveJournal (which tends towards the unfocused mundane and such). So this is going to be tightly themed.

As a short introduction to both me and to me running, here's a history for me:

1) I have been overweight and sedentary most of my life, until recently. I had my first child in early 2006 and in Jan 2007 I decided it was time to get rid of the baby-weight-plus so I eased into better living with a "one step at a time" approach that worked really well for me. In terms of diet it was just trimming off certain calories or foods and replacing them with better options, and in terms of activity it was initially low-key walking, then faster, then longer, then doing other exercises.
2) The running came into it because my sister is a runner and she encouraged me on that path - not so much in a "you should do this!" way as just speaking about it so positively and so clearly loving it. A friend of mine gave me a link to the Runner's World plan to begin running by doing walk/run intervals. It's supposed to be an 8-week program and it took me about a year but as of May '08 I managed to do 30 minutes straight of running... Or perhaps you might call it jogging, at a 6 mph pace, but it's something!
3) In May I also decided I would run a 5K. Just one, to see if I could do it and to say I had. I did it, with my sister, and had such a great time that I was hooked. Since then I've been trying to up my training so that I can do a longer distance race, and also I've run another two 5Ks. :)

So that's my history! I'm at a point of about 14 miles a week, spaced over five days. This week I hope to get the mileage up to about 15.5 and then I'm going to pull back for a couple of weeks - I think my knees need a vacation :P Tuesdays are my Long Outdoor Run days and tomorrow I'm going to try for a total of 4 miles running on a 5-mile course. It won't be 4 miles straight, just total; I've been doing a total of 3.5 miles and that hasn't felt too hard for a while so I'm going to try to step it up. There is an 8K in September that I would like to run and I think 2 1/2 months is enough time to get up to 5 miles. :)

So I will be posting on my progress, on my daily workouts, and if need be on my diet habits (though that will only be if something interesting comes up)!