NSV - I ran 20 minutes today....

On 6 September 2010 I made my way back into the gym in my quest to reclaim my health and fitness, and hopefully lose some weight in the process.

At that point in my life I was extremely out of shape - I weighed in at 149.1kg at my first weigh-in in many years......and even basic walking was a challenge for me....

My office was 1.5 km from my home and I actually drove to work every morning - on a really adventurous day I would take the bus, and then huff and puff my the last 200 metres up the hill to my office (today I realise it is not actually even a hill - just a slight incline (1 or 2 incline ;-))

My first day in the gym I had to do 3 minutes on the elliptical - and at the end of that I was totally bushed!! I had constant knee and back pain and very dodgy shoulders, so my poor trainer had all these “constraints” within which he had to try and help me get fit!!

Slowly “we” (Alex my trainer) pushed my bodies boundaries, and for months my motto was “Blood, Sweat and Voltaren!!” but things were moving long quite nicely....

Over the months I have been getting a lot stronger, and around May this year I told my trainer that I am now in a different place physically, and I want to start training as an “athlete” not a rehabilitation “patient” any longer.....be careful what you ask for :-)

I loved being able to push my fitness boundaries - I bought a mountain bike, started using the zumba DVD’s that had been gathering dust for the past year, and trained like a strong woman in the gym...... I was still not a big fan of any full on aerobic exercise, but did some of it because it was good for me :-)

About a month ago some crazy woman that now lives in my house decided that the next challenge would be C25K - who is this woman - and where did she come from?? I have never, and I really mean never in my adult life ran anywhere - not even for the ice cream truck - and had absolutely no desire to run.... so where did this come from....??

I still have no idea why I decided to do it - other than it was a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) and I thrive on those ......When I told my son what I was doing his reaction was “you are not really a couch potato any longer” meaning “this might be easy for you” - god I love the blind faith he has in his mother’s new found abilities!!

So fast forward to today - I was planning to run week 3 day 2 of C25K tomorrow - which means run 3 minutes / walk 3 minutes, run 90 seconds / walk 90 seconds....repeat twice....

This morning after another kick butt muscle building session with my trainer..... at the end of the session I normally do another 15 minutes reasonably “gentle” pedaling on the stationary bike, but today the 2 bikes we have at the gym was in use when we finished our session.....

So now that I am a “runner” I thought that I would do a little 5 minute run while I wait for the guys to get off the bikes.....
5 minutes went by quite quickly, and the guys were still on the bikes, so I kept on going - and very soon I hit the 10 minute mark and my HR was beating at 160.... so body was not stressing too much, and I decided to keep going another little bit...

By the 15 minute mark my HR was still steady at 160, and the 2 km mark was getting closer, so I just kept going - at 20 minutes and 15 seconds I hit the 2.5 km mark, and decided to call it a day.....

The amazing thing was that I still had some gas in the tank, but also realised that my body will most probably know about it later, so it was a good idea to leave some more milestones for another day :-)

Here I am - from a rehabilitation “patient” in September last year to running 2.5 km in 20 minutes - I keep being amazed at how far I have come......and I love every minute of my new active lifestyle :-)

One new goal at a time I plan to conquer those mountains, oceans and walks that is still waiting to be conquered....

For any “newbie” reading this - you might not think it is possible right now, but keep pushing every day, every week and after a few months you will start reaping the benefits of your hard work and dedication - it can and will happen - if you want it bad enough!!