I think your running three miles today is awesome. Keep it up and keep blogging about it too, it gives me hope :)
Thanks! It's been an interesting trip. I'd say "I feel better" but at the moment I feel like a truck ran over me, but I know it will eventually lead to feeling better...
I would love to help with this project! :D Hell, I will even donate my exercise dvd collection to kick this off.
excellent! email with what you have and we'll see if we can't find happy homes!
Never count followers!
Also, if you're going to keep running, be sure you have great shoes.
I wasn't counting, I just get the notice emailed that says "BlackRaven4211 has removed you from their friends list"
I think you can unsubscribe from those.
Seconded. If you're running, almost any distance - go and see a running shop and get your gait looked at. The amount and type of long term injuries from bad running shoes - eugh. Horrific.
I enjoy reading your blog whatever you write about. That's just strange that some folks would bail because of certain subjects. Your blog, write what you want. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?
Which reminds me, I must write about how I met the MST3K guys!
Some people find that kind of fitness stuff upsetting or triggering.
Not saying you should do this, but when I post about it, I usually put it under a cut and say something like, "Weight/fitness talk, scroll on if you wish."
that totally makes sense. i was figuring it was people who were like "exercise? wtf? bring on the rock stars & debauchery."
I'm sure there's some of that, too! ;)
Wear good shoes to run in! Buy the expensive running shoes. I ruined my knee wearing Payless Shoe Source "trainers." Ignore the calorie counters on the machines. They are wrong. The mirrors in the gym are likely wrong also, and the scale. The mirrors in the 24 Hour Fitness made my legs look wider than they really are, and the scales added five to seven pounds of weight that mysteriously evaporated when I used the scales at the university locker room.
And, I like reading about what you are doing, including going to the gym.
Keep on blogging about this if you wish. While I will never, EVER run 3 miles (I hate to run!), I still find it inspiring to read about.
I don't read any famous magazines, but thinking about your shoot with Steven Severin makes me smile.
I imagined that i hated running -- and I was pretty sure that I couldn't do it, that I wasn't fit enough, but it was a pretty good feeling to be able to actually do it.
Good for you! I'm more of a walker, and what I want to tackle is going up steep hills and stairway hills, which I did quite a bit of when I lived in San Francisco. Often I run out of breath doing this, but I can deal with that. I want to build up my muscles and endurance because the climb itself is interesting, and getting to the top and looking around is wonderful!
This. Very much this. Also the deal with not wanting to ruin my knees.
Turns out your knees handle it just fine if you don't heelstrike like our friends at Nike helpfully taught us to do, but instead land on the midfoot (ball of the foot) and make use of that wonderful shock-absorbtion system known as the "foot." It can take quite a bit of retraining if you're a chronic heel-striker, but once the muscles and tendons develop, it feels immensely better. Some prefer to land on the toes, but that seems to be a matter of personal preference.
Like you, I knew I'd need a personal trainer to push me until I could sustain things myself, and life just happened to throw me a great opportunity when I wasn't even looking. Then one day I realised that the 6Km that I'd just run on the treadmill was almost exactly the distance between home and the office, and remembered that we had showers at that office.
I then discovered that two runs per day were a little too much, but that I could run one way and walk the other, and the two styles of movement give very different workouts.
Calorie counters on machines are bullshit. Plus running 3 miles sounds way more impressive than "____ calories burned."
I've found when I focus on performance goals, the only thing that starts to matter is how well I performed, and my attention turns away from my pants size or scale weight or whatever and turns towards doing everything I can (sleep, fuel, barbaric yawps) to up my performance. Going from abusing my body to turning down delicious cake, simply because I was going to lift in an hour and was going for a PR that day, was like stepping into a different world.
(Now my goal is to just not be out of shape, because I've gotten really out of shape in the past couple of years.)
And I'm glad you're posting about this stuff. It's inspiring.
I bet you lost followers because they think your LJ seriously lacks cat pictures. :P
the cat picture thing is a serious possibility. I will have to rectify that with a cooking-with-Roswell....
If you need someone to handle the clerical aspect of it, drop me a line. I'm great with organization.
You're hired. Will email.
I still enjoy your stuff, even if I don't comment often. Keep it up!
Thanks -- i appreciate it!
You are so fucking awesome.
A) You ran too far, too fast, and clearly too much.
I strongly suggest the Couch to 5k program.
B) Running too far/too fast/too much is an easy way to find yourself injured or at the very least exhausted and demoralized. Take it slow, work yourself up. In a very short time you will be going farther an faster than you realized and it will be MUCH EASIER.
Take if from me. I've been running for almost 6 years. I've run a couple of half marathons over that time and also dropped out and restarted a couple of different running programs. At one point I lost 70lbs, but I've since gained 50 of them back. But I'm running (yet again). Did 6 very slow miles today. I'm doing another half marathon in February (Myrtle Beach) and I've signed up for my first full marathon in May (Potomac).
You can do it, but I hate to see you overdo it Take 3 days off, start over and run no more than 1-1.5 miles or start the C25k program.
-R
I'd agree with all of this except the first sentence, because that's not something other people can decide for you without a whole lot more details (after all, for all we know you ran 2.75 miles three days ago. Even when following a well-designed exercise program, there are going to be times when you're exhausted and sore afterwards - it was a race or a benchmarking trial, or just just happened to push it a bit more than usual, or it's the farthest you've gone to date. It's true that overdoing it is a bad idea, but you get to decide for yourself what overdoing it means, unless you have a coach monitoring you closely.
Having done a half marathon on the rowing machine this morning, I'm not exactly spritely today myself, but that's kind of normal as I build up distance. (One major advantage of rowing vs running distance: no impact. I don't think my knees would appreciate me running for miles.)
By the way, for Kyle and anyone else reading, I really liked the book Slow Fat Triathlete. It's basically about doing the sport you love because you love it, not because you think you'll ever be the fastest one out there. It does also have some good advice about avoiding I jury and overtraining as you start a new program.
I also have some DVDs that should go to a home where they might get used.
I've struggled with my weight for... well, forever. I am thinking on getting a membership at the local gym that's down the road, but I've not ever had luck with them in the past, mostly from my own laziness. Maybe this is the time I can move past that?
You could start with speed walking instead of running. It's more gentle on back and knees (impacts on ground are softer) and burns a lot of calories too.
Still. Well done on the running.
lowers over this. If they do not like it, they could just skip the posts...
PS: I am making kettle boiling noises but they don't blog easily.
flickr -> search CC -> interesting -> 
I hate running with a divine passion. It used to be a requirement on training camps to run three-four miles every morning, and I did it for the years I was at uni.
I enjoy lots of sport, I enjoy exercise. But ask me to put one foot in front of the other quickly (without it being in an asymmetrical shape or pattern), and I'll look at you funny.
Now *cycle* - that I'll do for *miles*. My treat for passing my driving test was to buy myself a road bike.
I have a gym membership. I haven't been to the gym in...a year? My credit card there expired a week or two ago, and I don't know what to do. I want to go. I NEED to go. I didn't mind it so much when I was there, except the "trainer" who showed me around first was obviously bored out of her mind with me and allllmost rolled her eyes every time I said, "I can't put that much strain on my knees. No." ("You're never gonna get anywhere if you don't try," she replied, obviously reading from a very tired script in her head.) I'm in the worst shape of my life, and part of me's freaking out about it. Not sure what I even need at this point. Workout buddy? New DVDs? Don't know. So...this is a useful conversation.
Wooo! Go you!
I can't run anymore because of my knee and hip problems, which makes me sad because I used to love it, but I agree with what others here have said, spend the cash on some really good shoes. Go to a shop that specializes in running/walking shoes and try on as many as you need so you find the right fit. Even just for walking it makes all the difference in the world. I did that, plus got some special inserts for plantar fascitis (which I have and it sucks) and now I can walk a lot more with a whole lot less pain.
I'm enjoying seeing your posts! Plus my livejournal friends page isn't too busy these days. It's good to see activity.
Why are ppl bailing? I like the fitness stuff! I couldn't run even if zombies were after me :o | 
kylecassidy
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