No Pain, No Gain?

Today marked the start of my third week doing this running thing, and the start of my second week of Couch to 5k. I'm going to go ahead and tell you that I'm calling it "running" for the sake of expediency, even though what I'm actually doing is alternating walking with an oftentimes shuffling, sad jog. Hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?

Since my husband was telecommuting today, and the baby was still running a temperature, I waited until he was taking a nap to go on my run. My husband suggested that I try the treadmills in our apartment complex's fitness center and since it was pretty hot out today, I thought that might not be a bad idea.

Can I tell you that these things ROCK?

I took this while walking, with my iPhone, which is why it's all cattywampus. It has your choice of four virtual trails on which to walk. You can walk at your own pace, or use it's virtual trainer. You can program presets for walking, jogging, and running so that you don't have to keep using the up and down arrows. This is great for people who are doing programs where you alternate like I do. It has a jack where you can plug in your iPod. You can watch TV on it. It measures your heartrate. The cup holders are big enough for a decent sized bottle of water and deep enough that you don't have to worry about it tipping out. There's a little ledge in front of the screen that will comfortably hold a book or magazine.

It's all pretty and easy to read and you can even save your progress to a usb drive if you like. This thing is pretty kick butt, as far as treadmills go!

I found that I had a lot easier time with my workout today, even though I was running for a longer amount of time. Now, I did some things differently today than I have been doing. For starters, I took an ibuprofen before I started. Then I stretched, which I haven't been doing because I thought (erroneously) that the warm up walk was all I needed. Of course, there was walking on the treadmill itself, and in an air conditioned room no less. Also, I wasn't pushing a stroller today.

So, the fact that I didn't totally want to die could be factored into any of those things, or it could simply be that my body is starting to realize that we are going to be moving more often now. I'm sure this didn't hurt either:

I seriously never want to run on hard ass concrete ever again. I finished and wasn't in pain! My knee wasn't throbbing like it had been. I didn't feel like I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. It was a pretty awesome feeling, like, hey, maybe I can do this after all! Yay me!

Of course, as I was walking back to my apartment I went and slipped on a curb and rolled my left ankle pretty badly. That caused me to fall on my right knee and skin it all to hell. I now have not only a huge lovely bruise right above the sore spot on my bad knee, but it also looks like someone shoved a golf ball under the skin of my left ankle! I can't even limp properly because I went and messed up both legs. I suck.

I honestly didn't think I had hurt it very badly because even though it hurt so much that I had to sit in the road there for a minute like a total dork before I was able to get up, by the time I got home it wasn't really hurting any more. I didn't realize it was swollen until I was in the shower tonight and went to shave my legs. It shocked the heck out of me because as clumsy as I am, and as many times as I have fallen in my life, I've never had any part of me swell up like that before. It's kind of trippy, if you'll pardon the pun. :)

Hopefully both of them recover enough that I'm able to go on my next run on Wednesday. I will definitely be seeing if I can swing getting over to the treadmills again!