10K Training

I started last week, but this week I took it outdoors. Yesterday morning I hit the pavement at 7:15 am and did about 3.5 km (turned out to actually be 4.0 km cause a road my map told me was a road turned out not to be a road and I had to go further than anticipated). My census? Outdoor running is hard! lol. Felt like I was pushing against something the entire time. I have also determined that traffic lights are my best friends! Can't run across 4 lanes of traffic! lol. But I'm very happy that I did it, and that it wasn't as scary as I thought. I was also keeping a pace of about 7:00 - 7:30 mins per km. If it wasn't for the walking at one point (after I had reached my distance goal) and one really long traffic light I would have kept it at that, by my mapmyran app told me I finished with an 8:00 min km.

There is one concerning factor of having a pace of 7:00-ish mins per km....it means times that by 10, and you have my time for the 10K. That seems like a really really long time to be running. I have no interest in marathons or half marathons. 10-15 km is probably the most I'll do. So right now I'm kinda worried about running for 60+ minutes. Since I'm just going for distance right now, I don't know how reasonable it is to expect my pace to pick up. Not sure how to do that. Is that what tempo runs do? I'll figure it out.

My leg hurts pretty bad. I have some pretty bad pain. Not while I'm running. But definitely after. I got some volturen gel, which is pretty much like ibuprofen for external use. I like that idea better than popping pills. I tried it today and it actually works. I'm also looking into how to strengthen my calves so that I can build up the muscle and it won't hurt so much.

Now my mind is torn about an outdoor run tomorrow morning, or an evening run indoors. It was really nice to be outside. It was beautiful yesterday. I'm thinking of 2 runs outdoors and 1 indoors per week. I also felt a really big sense of accomplishment in a) being out at 7 am, and b) actually finishing (including a hill I stupidly put in at the end!)

Let's see what my alarm clock tells me tomorrow :)