Addicted to Running

After that first 5k, I fell in love with running.  I had always been a pretty big fan of it, what with how much running is involved in soccer.  But once I had the 5k under my belt, I knew I had found a long-term cardio plan.  There's something about running that is better than therapy.  Of course, it helped when I added my sister to my routine.

My sister and I started running together, and training for a 10k in October 2011.  I still had not re-joined a gym, so running and Stroller Strides were my only exercise.  I was still nursing, but my diet wasn't the greatest.  It wasn't as bad as it had been, but I was definitely letting it slide.

My sister and I (loosely) followed the Hal Higdon 10k Intermediate Plan.  We would get together several nights/week and run whatever was on the list for that day.  We quickly began to realize that the second mile (from 1.01 to 2.0) was our "Suck and Hate," and that once we were over that hump, it was easy to cruise through the remaining mileage.  We cheered each other on, and carried each other through low spots.  If I could tell she was fading, I would bring up a story to get her out of her head, and vice versa.  We chose a 10k that was two loops of a 5k.  Our goal was to finish a 5k before the winner of the 10k finished his race.  We finished our 5k in 32 minutes, 3 minutes ahead of the 10k winner.  Yay us! :)

After the 10k, I planned to take a few weeks off, and then start training for a Sprint Tri.  A few weeks turned into the whole month of November, as being a mom took over my life! November was my daughter's 1st birthday, and the giant party that comes with that.  I also gave up pumping on Nov 1 (I had been pumping 3 times/day), and was dealing with all of that.  At the end of November, I was still holding at 195 pounds, and decided that it was time to crank it up!

My daughter's birthday party
It was a Milk n Cookies Pajama party :)