Running and Counting

I don't think I've ever mentioned this before, but I thought it might be a helpful hint for anybody else that struggles with jogging.

When I first started my weight loss journey a little over a year ago, the one activity that I dreaded the most was jogging. I just wasn't good at it and I didn't like it. Now, fast forward 1 year and I find myself not hating jogging, but not madly in love with it either. I enjoy it.

When I first started jogging, I think one of the reasons I didn't like it and thought I wasn't good at it was because I had a hard time keeping my pace. I never had a steady pace. I was talking with my mom about this one day and she said to count your strides.

I've been counting my strides ever since. When I first started counting my strides, I would do 100 strides and then I would stop and walk until I felt like I could jog again. If I felt like I could jog longer than 100 strides, I would.

Now, I'm up to wear I can jog 7.0 miles at a time. :) Yay! I still count my strides too.

Maybe this will help you!

Who's Got the Beat?

I'm always in search of new music that has a good beat to it that I can workout to. As I was jogging my 6.0 miles tonight, I was listening to my Zune and an AWESOME song came along that had a fantastic beat to it that helped me keep a good pace, so I thought I'd share it with ya'll in case you were looking for good music to, so here ya go:

4.0 Miles

I've reached a milestone in my jogging. For the longest time it took me a while to get to the point where I could jog 3.2 miles without stopping to walk. Then the Christmas season came and work got super busy and I didn't get to workout much, so I had to work myself back up to jogging 3.2 miles without stopping.

Well, tonight, after not working out for almost a week (I was on vacation and I wasn't feeling well), I was able to jog 4.0 miles without stopping to walk! Woohoo!!!

This makes me doubly excited because now I'm going to do my first 10k (6.4 miles) this summer. My company is creating a jogging/running group and I'm going to join it and do a race with them. I have the option of either doing a 10k or doing a 1/2 marathon (13.1 miles). I'd really like to do the 1/2 marathon, but I don't know if that would be overshooting it and I don't know if I'm ready to do the 1/2 marathon, so I will be happy with doing a 10k. Yay!