Week 3!

I changed up the running a bit yesterday...I had to go up to campus to sign some papers, so I left my stuff in my office and ran home! It was a nice run, about 5 pm so not too hot. I was amazed that I was able to run 3 minutes! I think the music definitely helped. :)

Here's my route. For some reason the little map has a detour that isn't on my original google map? Anyway, there is no detour onto College! But otherwise this is basically where I ran...about 1.5 miles!!!

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Here's my music. I think it's my best music so far!

Narissa Arrives - Enchanted Soundtrack (1:34)
No Ceiling - Eddie Vedder (1:34)
Boyfriend - Ashlee Simpson (3:03)
Something Hot - Afghan Whigs (2:57)
The West Wing Theme Song (0:46)
The West Wing Theme Song (0:46)
All Over Me - Danger Flowers (1:43)
Good Love Never Dies - Liz Phair (2:59)
The First Cut Is the Deepest - Cat Stevens (3:01)

Week 2, Day 2

Tonight was a night of firsts for me: first time running at night, and first time running with another person. Or, people, as the case may be.

My friend Sheena and her sister Yvonne are staying with us for the night as part of their road trip across the country. Sheena is actually the one who introduced me to SparkPeople, after Yvonne introduced her. In turn, I introduced Sara. So we are all connected in one big web of health. Anyway, Sheena and Yvonne are in town, and in the process of planning their stay Sheena mentioned how hard it was to get some good exercise done while on the road. Luckily for them, I was planning on running today, so I offered that we could all go running together. Also in the course of this conversation I discovered that Yvonne had done the Couch-to-5k program, finished successfully, and can now easily run for 15 minutes at a time even when she hasn't been in a while. Yay!

So we all went out to dinner to this new Japanese/Thai place that was delicious (I actually liked their curry!), then went shopping in some stores in Coventry (a cool neighborhood near where we live) where we got some heavily discounted earrings and centerpieces for Sheena's upcoming wedding, and came home for a run. By the time we left it was 9:15, so night had fallen. We were running in a safe area, though, with a running path away from the road but within eyesight, so especially with three of us we were still good-to-go. I liked running out of the sun, but I don't think I would go by myself at night. I need to find a local running buddy, maybe (no offense, Sara).

Running with others definitely made me push myself harder than I otherwise would. Yvonne definitely kicked all our bums, and I suspect Sheena could have kicked my bum as well but was sticking back with me for the camaraderie. But pushing myself was good. We even added an extra minute-long run at the end, because "Eye of the Tiger" came on Sheena's iPod and she was inspired.

We definitely had a talk about how SparkPeople was really the reason that all three of us wanted to go running tonight, because it had inspired us to live more healthful lives. Yay!


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And then we went back again, for a total of 2.9 miles. Ignore the little side-trip onto Coventry, we only went where the white dots are.

Since we were talking a little during the walking segments, it was a little hard to judge how good the songs were. But that was okay. I still enjoyed them. Especially Walker's contribution. I just think I might use mostly this same playlist on Friday. Except for the Squarepusher song - there wasn't really a tempo for most of it.

As always, aqua songs are running, navy are walking. This is all music from TJ's collection.

• Bongo Confront / Return of the Candyman - Charlie Hunter & Pound for Pound (1:21)
  
• The Wicked Messenger / John Wesley Harding - Bob Dylan (2:03)
  
• St. Andrew (This Battle is in the Air) / Icky Thump - The White Stripes (1:50)
  
• Road / Pink Moon - Nick Drake (2:03)
  
• Unreleased (3) / Burningn'n Tree - Squarepusher (1:28)
  
• Them Good Ol' Fashioned Parallels - Walker Evans (1:58)
  
• Latino Interactive / B-Side - Ikue Mori (1:30)
  
• Faust Arp / In Rainbows - Radiohead (2:10)
  
• Chippewa / The Bribe - John Zorn (1:25)
  
• Deianara Crush / Sweden - The Mountain Goats (1:54)
  
• Gilly (Breakdown) / The Genius of the Electric Guitar - Charlie Christian & the Benny Goodman Sextet (1:32)
  
• Sonja / I Love Everybody - Lyle Lovett (2:00)
  
• I'm So Tired / The White Album - The Beatles (2:03)*
  
• Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da / The White Album - The Beatles (3:09)
  
• While My Guitar Gently Weeps / The White Album - The Beatles (4:45)

*I actually ran to 1:00 of this song while Sheena tried to sing "Eye of the Tiger." It's hard to sing while you're running, even if you have a masters degree in vocal performance.

Week 2, Day 1

Well, I braved the heat. I would have gone sooner, had I known that it was actually about 20 degrees cooler outside than it was in my apartment. Boo for no air conditioning.

By the time I did end up going, the skies had gotten ominously overcast. I made it one song into my run when it started raining and I could hear thunder in the distance. The rain actually felt pretty good, but I didn't really want to get hit by lightning. So I altered my route a little.


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That's right, I ran up and down my block 6 times. Definitely not as fun as running around by the lake, but it more or less ensured that I didn't get caught in thunder for more than 1:30. I did manage to finish the whole run without further weather incident, although it sounds like the rain has since started to come down pretty hard and the thunder is getting louder. Good timing, I suppose.

Running for 90 seconds was noticeably different than running for 60. My body could definitely feel when it had been 60 seconds and requested to please stop running. But I told it who was boss. I'm hoping that by the end of the week 90 seconds will feel as easy as 60 did at the end of last week.

This playlist was a little easier to make than last weeks' - there are a lot more songs in the 90-120 second range than the 60-90. The walking songs are in navy, the running ones are in aqua.

• *Bafferton Village / Walsh's Hornpipe // The Bells of Dublin - The Chieftans (1:24)
  
• *I'm Walkin' / Rock N' Roll Era : 1957 - Fats Domino (2:11)
  
• *Pastime with Good Company (King Henry VII) / Pastyme with Good Companye - Flying V (1:36)
  
• *Ebudae / Paint the Sky with Stars - Enya (1:53)
  
• The Flight of the Bumblebee (Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov) / Greatest Hits - Philadelphia Orchestra (1:26)
  
• *One by One (Lebo M) / Lion King the Musical - Original Cast (1:54)
  
• Hound Dog / Grease Soundtrack - Sha-Na-Na (1:25)
  
• Eleanor Rigby / Revolver - The Beatles (2:08)
  
• TROGDOR / Strongbad Sings and Other Type Hits - Strongbad (1:40)
  
• *Tonks Hunts a Leprechaun - Erin Grady (2:08)
  
• *Kevin Puts - Canyon for Solo Marimba 1. Toccata / Ritual Protocol - Makoto Nakura (1:23)
  
• *Kpanlongo / Spring 2007 Concert - Case Concert Choir (2:06)
  
• *The Luckiest / Rockin' the Suburbs - Ben Folds (4:45)

For a total of 25.8 minutes.

Week 2, Day 1

This was my first day of week two...my muscles were definitely complaining by the end! It was a good run, though, albeit a little hot. Yesterday I went running in the evening, which was much cooler, so maybe I'll try to stick to mornings and evenings when I can from now on. Here is my "soundtrack" for this week:

West Wing theme song x2 (1:32)
Tonks Hunts a Leprechaun - Erin Grady (2:08)
Narissa Arrives - Enchanted Soundtrack (1:34)
Chief Sitting in the Rain - Yo Yo Ma et. al. (2:02)
L'Autre Valse D'Amelie - Yann Tiersen (1:33)
Speed the Plow Medley - Yo Yo Ma et. al. (1:58)
J'y Suis Jamais Alle - Yann Tiersen (1:34)
When You Wish Upon a Star (2:01)
Le Banquet - Yann Tiersen (1:31)
Angel theme song (1:59)
Reprise - Patty Griffin (1:20)
What's that I Hear - Phil Ochs (2:02)

For a total of 21.1 minutes. The best running song was definitely "Narissa Arrives" because it feels like you're running away from something evil the whole time. :)

Week 1, Rest Day

I'm definitely excited to begin Week 2 of this program. I have Sara on board now, helping out and keeping me motivated as well as contributing to this blog. And she's shown me new things already, like that this is possible:


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This is where I'll be running tomorrow. It's a slight variation on the paths that I've been running before. It's nice to get to know the neighborhood a little better as I do this running thang. I've got my playlist all set and ready to go, too, but I will make you wait for that until after I've run it.

This coming week I will be running on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday if all goes well, so look for posts from me on those days (and maybe more!)

Hello!

Hi, I'm Sara, Erin's friend from college, and I'll be running along with her. For me, it's definitely couch (read: lazing around in bed) to 5K! My comprehensive exam this past semester (I'm in a PhD program) really killed my will to live/exercise ;) and now that the semester is over and I don't have to walk 20 minutes to campus every day, I've really gotten bad about getting exercise. Erin has definitely inspired me to be more active this summer. :) The running to music has worked really well for me too (this was my third day), and is much more fun than other running I've done in the past. I've just been running around my neighborhood in Berkeley, CA, which is pretty flat and not too many folks on the sidewalk.

I'm also excited to try running. Everyone else in my family is a really impressive runner (especially my sister, who was in high school and college cross country and track)...in the past, I've gone to the Akron Children's Hospital 5K with them...and while everyone else was running the 5K and winning trophies, I would run/walk in the 1 mile "fun run". So here's to being able to run the 5K with them someday! At least all their running might mean I have the genes to be a runner even if I haven't succeeded in the past??

My goal for the summer is basically just to feel healthier...I feel good about my weight overall, but not about my ratio of muscles to fat...basically, I am about zero muscles right now. :) I've also noticed this past semester that I've been getting out of breath faster than I want to, so obviously running should be good for that. I've also been doing a little bit of strength training on our new Wii Fit and I want to keep that up and add some exercises that don't work on the Wii Fit (i.e. situps)...for that, I need to clean my room so I have a place to do them! I don't have too much going on this summer (I'm working part time and trying to study for comprehensive exam number 2 in the fall), so I'm going to pencil myself in for running every day, which may or may not actually happen. I figure that if I try for every day, I will at least run the 3 days required by the program! So far it has been working as I've run the past three days. I can actually feel it getting easier, so that's encouraging!

I don't seem to have very much "short" music, so what I did was make a 10 minute playlist and I play it twice through for my run. Not as exciting as Jazzerpat but it gets the job done. :) It's a funny mix of the Amelie soundtrack and the Into the Wild soundtrack, with the best song definitely being the West Wing theme song. The "presidential" sounding music is very inspirational and I can imagine I am Josh going for a run! I will have to figure out a way to incorporate it next week when I've graduated from the "run 1 minute" level.

Here's my playlist for this week, with running songs in red and walking songs in pink:

Photographs - Eddie Vedder (0:59)
L'Autre Valse D'Amelie - Yann Tiersen (1:33)
Tuolumne - Eddie Vedder (1:00)
Le Banquet - Yann Tiersen (1:31)
West Wing Theme Song (0:46)
Setting Forth - Eddie Vedder (1:40)
La Redecouverte - Yann Tiersen (1:13)
No Ceiling - Eddie Vedder (1:34)

Total Time: 10.2 minutes, to be played twice for 1 run/walk.

Here's where I've been running so far. According to Google Maps, it's about .8 miles each way for a total of 1.6 miles...not bad!



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