Good Week and New Goals

I had a good week of being more fit this week. And I am so proud of myself! For once, I didn’t feel guilty about this more fit, less fat plan, and how I am not sticking to it as I feel like I should. After a hiatus to go to Lake Tahoe and LA, I returned to San Francisco this week with renewed vigor.

Tuesday through Friday, I woke up at 6am, went for a jog/walk for 30 minutes, and spent about another 30 stretching and doing strength building work in the living room. Since it’s Tour de France season, I’ve been doing my living room exercises with the television on to the Versus network with the volume turned down so that Scott doesn’t hear and watch the cyclists wind their way down French roads. I have also been sweating more than I can remember ever having sweated before. My shirt at my armpits is soaked and sweat has been literally dripping from my face (I’ve been pulling my shirt up from the bottom and using the sleeves to wipe the sweat off my face). It’s more than a little gross but I’m taking the actual sweating to be a good sign.

Saturday was a real accomplishment. I don’t exercise on weekends, thinking that it’s the weekend and, therefore, my time to relax and sleep in. But, this Saturday, I woke up at 6:30am (the extra thirty minutes were my weekend treat to myself) and took a different jogging route. I’ve been going from my house to Japantown and back, which is mostly flat and about a three mile loop. And, since I walk most of morning routing, I wanted to lengthen my outing and make it a little more challenging. So, Saturday, I tested out a new route: from my house, along the Panhandle, to the edge of Golden Gate Park, and back. It’s a little longer, at about four miles, and there are two sets of steep hills, one at the beginning and another at the end.

The hill at the beginning was a good warm-up as quickly walked it, and the one at the end was a test of my stamina (I had been nervous about this last set of steeper hills, wondering if I would catch a cab from the bottom of it back to my house if I was that exhausted that I couldn’t climb it). I noticed that it was windier and cooler heading west on this new route than when I headed north on my other Japantown route. But, it wasn’t the hills nor the wind that bothered me the most about this route; it was the other joggers.
When I started my jog there was hardly anyone in the park, which was nice. By a little after 7am though, tons of joggers were out and I grew to be embarrassed that I was walking as they were all whizzing by in their short shorts. I know I need to get over the self-consciousness but when I’m being lapped by someone three times my age, it’s a little embarrassing.

But, I am going to stick with it, even if it means that I’ll be jogging even earlier to avoid the hordes of the real runners because I have new running goals. I’m going to run Bay to Breakers (a 7-mile run from the San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean) next May and, feeling ambitious, will run the San Francisco Half-Marathon next August. So, I have ten months to go from being able to run 0.25 miles to 7 miles. We’ll see what happens!