Week 1, Day 1

So now that it's summer and all, I've had the time to actually work out a little. And I decided this week that maybe I hadn't given running a good enough shot at courting my favor. I've tried a few times, even going as far as going to captain's practices for my high school cross country team, but I could never manage to get into it. But I've had recent inexplicable urges to try it again, so I thought, "Heck, why not, it's free?"

I went for my first run on Friday. There's this really nice running/walking/biking path right by my apartment, so I used Google Maps to determine distances between certain landmarks. I was going to walk half a mile to the path, jog a mile down the path, and then walk the 1.5 miles home. My legs, unfortunately, had a different idea. Silly Erin decided to do her leg strength exercises right before going on her run, so of course my muscles were not too happy with my idea of making them run for a mile. Interestingly, though, even though my muscles gave up, I never got a stitch in my side or too terribly short of breath - my lungs could easily have finished the mile, I think, and that had always been my problem before. Yay for being in relatively good cardiovascular shape! When I got home I figured out that I had run for half a mile - not too shabby for my first go-round.

Anyway, I though that doing some interval training might be a better way to work up to running than just trying to push myself to a mile immediately. I decided to do the Couch-to-5k training plan, since I've heard good things about it on SparkPeople. Here, I encountered a bit of a problem. Running intervals, of course, requires that you can time what you're doing. While I love my watch, it doesn't have any fancy features like a stopwatch, or even a digital display. I came up with the alternate idea of making playlists with songs of the appropriate lengths, so I could switch modes when the song changed.

Here, I think, may be the difference between running now and running in the past - I've never done it with music before. I went today for my first programmed run, and it was definitely 20 times more enjoyable.

Anyway, I thought I'd share my running playlist with you. Week 1 of the program has me running for 60 seconds then walking for 90 seconds for a total of 20 minutes.

The walking songs are in navy, the running ones are in aqua. I added a few walking songs at the end because I wanted to go for more than 20 minutes. Songs I felt worked particularly well for their purpose get an asterisk!

• *The Avenue Q Theme / Avenue Q Original Cast Soundtrack (1:05)
• Dulaman (Michael McGlynn) / ACDA 2005 - Bentonville High School Chamber Choir (1:45)
• *For the Mouse is a Creature of Great Personal Valour / Rejoice in the Lamb (Benjamin Britten) - My Conducting Recital, Sarah Allen, soloist (1:01)
• *Bookends / Greatest Hits - Simon & Garfunkel (1:21)
• The Arrival of the Wren Boys / The Bells of Dublin - The Chieftans (1:00)
• *Cigarette / Whatever and Ever Amen - Ben Folds Five (1:38)
• Berliner Messe - Erster Alleluiavers (Arvo Part) / I Am the True Vine - ProArte Singers (1:03)
• Hallelujah / Rejoice in the Lamb (Benjamin Britten) - King's College Choir (1:22)
• *I Think I Have a Chance with this Guy / Strongbad Sings and Other Type Hits - What's Her Face (0:56)
• Kom! (Monica Aslund) / Spring 2006 Concert - Case Concert Choir (1:34)
• *Flight of the Bumblebee from Tsar Saltan (Rimsky-Korsakov) / Live in Osaka - Eastman Wing Ensemble (1:12)
• If Ye Love Me / Pastyme with Good Companye - Flying V (1:32)
• *Introduction / Punch While Rap - Ill Mitch (1:06)
• Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee (Reprise) / Grease Soundtrack - Olivia Newton-John
• *Over Hill, Over Dale (Vaughan Williams) (no clue who sings this, it was on a practice CD) (1:08)
• Ite Missa Est - Deo gratias / Machaut - Messe de Notre Dame - Ensemble Organum (1:20)
• *Under African Skies / Leaving Lights - Mark & Tara Franklin (3:21)
• *Roseville Fair / Leaving Lights - Mark & Tara Franklin (4:18)
• *Wildflower Song / Leaving Lights - Mark & Tara Franklin (3:20)
• Leaving Lights / Leaving Lights - Mark & Tara Franklin (5:40)
• Lights of Lousianne / Leaving Lights - Mark & Tara Franklin (3:51)

Now, having assembled playlists such as these to take me clear into July, I needed to get some way of playing them. So I broke down and bought a cheap 1gig mp3 player. My iPod Touch will have to wait. This is really cool, though, especially for $15. Definitely sufficient for my purposes here!

So I'm optimistic about the 10 weeks ahead for this running program. I'm hoping I stick to it. Hopefully committing myself to posting my weekly playlists will help give me some motivation. More motivation - running with my brother when I go to MA in July, at which point I should be up to 2.5 miles. But, at very least, I have an mp3 player now. Yay!