Singing for a smaller me

Running. It's the white elephant in the room whenever you talk about working out, and for the longest time, I've babbled on and on about wanting to be a runner and my admiration for runners and running. Until now it was all talk. Some time back, I realized all it was ever going to be was talk if I didn't do something about it, and in typical Zan fashion threw myself head first into researching how to get started running.

Nope, it wasn't enough for me to throw on an old pair of shoes and hit the pavement.

If you've done any research, or have eyes, you'll know it's ridiculously easy to hurt yourself when running/jogging/living(?), so taking a few minutes to crack open a book or do an internet search is a pretty damned good idea. For instance, I've long noticed that my feet roll out (heck, if you look at the bottom of my shoes, you'll see that), and throwing on any old pair of sneakers would likely have been a really, really, really bad idea. Then there's the HOW in How to Start Running which is by no means as simple as hop on the treadmill and go. If you're like me, and have never run a freaking day in your life, you need to take it really slow. In my case, that would be the C25K program, or the Couch Potato to Running a 5K Program.

Okay, research in hand (that's not all of it, but most people out there aren't idiots - they can find this information themselves), the next step was procuring said running gear. Sturdy Sports Bra: Check. Workout Clothes: Check. Running Shoes: Uhhhh.... And this is where our heroine got stuck because I couldn't/wouldn't get off my ass to go and buy a pair of running shoes. The inner monologue went something like this (in my best whining voice): "But running shoes are 'spensive and I don't know where to go to BUY running shoes" and "going to a sporting good store is SCARY" and "I'm too big to go buy running shoes at a sports store, they'll laugh at me" and so on and so forth.

Eventually, I got tired of the excuses. Something finally clicked, I couldn't tell you what, and last Friday I took my lazy butt to the Sports Basement and bought myself these beauties:

My first pair of running shoes: Mizuno Wave Rider 13s. Price-y but pretty and they felt good on my feet. Woohoo!

And you'll never guess what I did today. Okay, you probably guessed since I'm babbling on about running, but I'm gonna pretend you didn't guess. I ran. Okay, I jogged. And walked. Then jogged again. Then walked some more, and made my way through Week One, Day One of the C25K. I'm pretty stoked and super excited to keep on going. I'll update my running progress the next time I run.

And for those of you who are scared of running like me, but want to do it, I'll leave you with a few links:

About.com's Running Page - Lots of resources for beginning runners. Check it out.
Couch to 5K - Not the original program, but another great resource including a link to the guys that started the craziness.

Have a great one folks!