Running, Runnning, Running

February 9, 2012.

"Running, running, running when the drum says running. When the drum says stop you stop!" This is a song I sing with my younger students while playing a buffalo drum. It is how I felt last night on the treadmill. Typically my treadmill workout consists of 10 minutes with alternating minutes of running and walking. Last night I was determined to run as long as I could in one go.

This was no small feat as I was highly frustrated with my inability to locate the power button for a good 20 minutes, although this stumble gave me an arm workout as I opened and closed the treadmill multiple times and dragged it across the floor to try different outlets in my dad's house. By the time I got on the working treadmill I was tired, but I upped the speed to 4.5mph and set off running.

Frustration hit its uppermost point when I could not read the display to find out how long I had been running for (defeated my intent to time myself on how long it took me to run 1km) and I could not remember the conversion for how much of a mile I needed to run to hit 1km (turns out it is .62 miles). Chris in his effort to help me tried to encourage me to keep running until I hit my 1km mark while he tried to sort out my display. I was annoyed, I snapped, I stopped running, but then I got back on.

A rough estimate is that it will take me 8 minutes to run 1km. I'm going to time it for real tonight. The good news is that I ran for 3.5 minutes then 2 minutes straight. This goal is seeming realistic and achievable at this moment. I'm looking forward to running the 1km without stopping, lessening my time as I run faster, and running for longer distances (I would like to train for 2km so my 1km race is easy).

Now to send an email to match up with my new running buddy...