Morning Glories!  I finally ran last night and it felt great.  I had a lot of obstacles but I kept my eye on the prize (running) and got out with one of my psycho dogs.  My dogs are psycho so I did a lot of pulling and yanking an every once and a while I had to go a little faster than I wanted because she wouldn't slow down.  Hopefully she iwll get better over time or I will get faster.

GoIrish   Seabrook is halfway between Houston and Galveston but on the coastline.  I am about  1/4 mile from the Gulf of Mexico.  As a matter of fact, the run was at the Kemah Boardwalk, which is on the water.  I love it here..except during hurricanes.  Our town was hit by Ike and some people still dont have homes to live in...wiating for ins money or Fema...still a few FEMA trailers.  We had whole neighborhoods that were destroyed and some homes that just vanished...people came home to an empty lot.  For your 2ND 5K don't fret.  This is a lifestyle change...you will have so many more to do.  Relax and enjoy.  It is nice when you have a pace setter.

Turtle  LOL I do the same thing..run faster for those two reasons.  Good pace 14.4...pretty soon you will have to change your name to rabbit instead of Hare.

Amanda   I love it from No Way to 5K!!!  That is exactly what is was, wasn't it. WE all thought runners were crazy and now look at all of us.  I love the saying.  Amanda I am emotional also and cried W5D3 and then cried so hard that I started to hyperventilate and made it hard to run the cool down...my family just laughed and I learned my lesson.  LOL

Smashville  that is awesom about the second 5 minute run.  I think it takes our body a bit of time to warm up and normally when we try to start running, we don't allow our bodies to get to that point and just quit.  C25K gets us to that point.  My first 8-10 minutes are my hardest. If I can mentally push through those, hten I am fine.

MFMR   Kids and communication.  My daughter does the same thing when it comes to afterschool events.  Very funny about the ambulance.  I am sure you guys are going to do great.

Dade  Good question.  Right now focus on technique and endurance.  Don't worry about speedwork until you have 6 to 12 months into running.  Running is new for your body and you need to get use to the movement.  Listen to your body, and it sounds like you are.  I wear a heartrate monitor and watch my heartrate.  If it gets too high, I know to slow down to bring it down.  It is sorta a dance at first, speed up, slow down, trying different techniques of running...that is what these weeks are about.  Pretty soon it will come a little more naturally.

Movie  If you want to lose weight you have to change your habits.  If you are like most of us and over 200 then you have some bad habits that need to be addressed.  Running is great. I typically burn about 400 during my run.  During y 10K I burned 1261 calories.  It is so much harder to burn than it is to consume.  It takes me 1 second to eat one m&m however, to burn off that m&m I have to run the length of a football field.  I can eat 4 100 cal cookies in a day and there goes all the calories I burned for running.   I know, it sucks.  I will workout until the cows come home...the eating is what I struggle with adjusting.

Ok, as promised, my wrap-up of this morning. I finally got out for my first run in a week. I guess it went about as well as I could expect...it was a 5 minute warm up walk, 30 minute run, 5 minute cool down. I had to take a few brief walk breaks thanks to some icky stomach cramping (Um hi, digestive system. Get with the program, please.) but I'm glad I got out there.

The more exciting news, though, is that according to my stats at dailymile.com, Friday's run will put me at over 100 miles of running! I am SO excited! I can't believe I'm going to hit such a ridiculous milestone! 100 miles! Crossed by me! On foot! Aaaaahhhh! I wish I had disposable income to buy myself a congratulatory gift! (I'd totally get a new, non-ginormous ipod and a nike plus sensor...I'd love to have some better and slightly more accurate statistics to play with and I certainly wouldn't complain about an mp3 player that's actually small and discrete compared to the pocket-Bible size of my old generation iPod!)

I just wanted to thank you all for being with me on each and every one of those hard-earned miles! I'm so grateful for your humor, your sympathy, and your support! Keep on running, all!

Hey all. Wanted to introduce myself as I am going to start the C25K today (again) after slacking off for about 1 year and gaining weight back.

The good stuff: I started C25K in 2004 and lost about 80 pounds in a little over a year and built up to run 12 miles at one time preparing for a half. My blood pressure and cholesterol dropped and the doctor took me off BP and cholesterol meds. Handling stress was easier and healthier. Life was better.

The bad stuff: Training for the half set me back as I injured my knee and had to take time off. When I healed, I went back to running and maxed at 8 miles but again was injured. Slowly the weigh crept back and I got into some bad habits, went back on the BP meds, took essentially one year off running other than a spurt here and there.

Good stuff again: I am still down 35 pounds from my high so all is not lost. I've done this before so I know I can do it again. My inspiration is learning of a (overweight) family member diagnosed with terminal cancer and her strength in fighting and continuing to fight the battle.

Joe

Hi everyone,

Another day in the life of a roadrunner:  Finished W8D1 today, and unfortunately it's crazy windy in NY today (up to 40mph winds) and I'm still nursing a slight injury to my right ankle after Tuesday's run, but I had to give it a try.  I was slower than normal; which for this turtle was a 15.34 pace, but at least I didn't struggle too much and my ankle felt okay.  Man it was windy though!  For parts of my run the wind was hitting me right in the face, so I just put my head down and kept pushing through (good resistence training!) until I got hit in the face with some leaves and garbage.  That made me feel just great!    Because I felt so good, I ended up running 33 minutes today after I pulled the leaves out of my face.

Irish-I'm always nervous about every 5K I participate it.  Usually I'm so nervous, I feel like throwing up before each one.  Just remember to run your race, and not worry about everyone else.  If you could find someone to stick with during the race, I'm sure that will help.

Anthony-Sounds like WW agrees with you.  Keep up the good work!

Dade-What everyone is saying about pace is true-take it from a turtle.  Originally I was pushing myself too hard, and couldn't breathe; I was miserable.  Now, even though I'm slow, I feel so much better while I'm running, and look forward to days when I run.  Who would have ever thought I'd say that?  Also, your body will feel different everyday, so you may have some great runs and some bad runs.  It happens to everyone.

Movie-In my experience, my diet is okay; not great, but certaintly better than it has been.  I find that in order to lose the weight, I have to run.  I need that activity to continue my weight loss, even if my diet is good, if I don't run, I typically will not lose, or only have a small loss, in a week's time.

Libby-Nothing feels better than getting into clothes that you couldn't previously.  That is so awesome!!  Congratulations!

Fluffy-It must feel good to run again.  Hopefully you and your puppies are training each other, and eventually they will calm down and you can go on the pace you want.

Potato, BITW, and Jasmine-Being that I'm on week 8 of C25K, I have to start thinking of what program I want to transition to.  You all give good reasons to either do OHR or GW28K, or even incorporating some speedwork into my program, but I'm still unsure of what to do.  I like the ipod application for GW, but I think I'm still at the point where I need to build stamina, and I would love to get faster because I'm still can't finish a 5K in the 30 minute program.  I have a lot to think about. Thanks for all the insight.

Happy Thursday Everybody!

Thank you all! I have to admit, this community and my short time being here as a poster has been super-positive. So thank you guys in return!!

Oh..I forgot to mention that I lost about 26 pounds. (I started at 200 pounds) It is so slow and I haven't lost anything in a month but I keep trying..The scale is stuck..really stuck..

A little caveat emptor for you all.

I took a walk last night in the Five Fingers...looked down, noticed I could see my foot.

The stitching is separating...I've had them for barely a month...hopefully they'll take them back, but I don't feel so confident in said product anymore.