Today was the big day.  5 minute warm-up and then 20 minutes of pure jogging for our Couch to 5K.

Our thoughts before the run:
20 min…oh my goodness.  I don’t know if we will make it.
Don’t think of it as 20 minutes but as 8 minutes.
Yeah, 8 very long minutes.
We will just run until someone has to stop.
Let’s jog for 10 minutes and then walk for 2 minutes and then jog another 10.
15 seconds and we run!

Thoughts during the run:
12 minutes and 30 seconds left to go.  We ran just over 8 minutes!
Let’s run to Krug St.  We can do it.
Krug St, that’s far.
We can do it ladies!
Look, the end of Krug St!
Woo hoo the end of Krug St.
6 minutes and 30 seconds
We’ve almost doubled our 8 minute jog!  Let’s just keep going.
3 minutes …. 1 minute and 30 seconds …. 30 seconds …. 10 seconds

Thoughts after the run:
WE DID IT!  WE JOGGED FOR 20 MINUTES STRAIGHT!
So proud of my running ladies!
High 5’s all around.
I’d hug you guys but I’m too tired.

The above thoughts weren’t all mine.  They are from all three of us.

We are pretty amazed that we jogged for 20 minutes.  Yes, we didn’t run, we jogged and we had a good pace to accomplish our goal, but just think by the end of this jogging for 20 minutes will be a piece of cake and we might even be able to jog a little faster.

I had said to the girls we should run for 10 minutes and then take a 2 minute walk and then run again, but as we got going I thought we should really try and push ourselves.  So once we got closer and after Julie gave us the 12 minutes left mark I said, “Let’s run until Krug St.”.  I didn’t want to stop.  I wasn’t breathing heavy.  I wasn’t so dead I needed to stop.  I was hoping the girls were feeling the same way or had the encouragement to keep going.  I know for myself if I didn’t say that, I would have stopped since we got past the 10 minute mark.

A few years ago, actually after my first year at Heritage (2001 I think) I walked every morning from Monday – Friday.  I went at 7am.  I remember wanting to jog, but it was so hard and there was a lot of hills.  At one spot in my run it was flat.  I would tell myself just one more telephone pole. Just to the next tree.  This would help me get there.  I thought I would try it today.

After we got to Krug St. I said just to the next turn.  Although that was great I think we were more motivated by the fact we only had 5 minutes left.  Probably if we stopped jogging we might not have wanted to start again.  Thanks to Julie for voicing this as it was another motivation to keep going.  We turned the corner and 30 seconds later we were finished our 20 minutes.  Wow!  I don’t know how to express how excited we are.  I am sure we will have a great day today!

We woke up before most people are awake and we jogged.  We jogged for a full 20 minutes!  I wonder how many times I’ve written that in this blog!  It’s Friday and we have two days to recuperate before our next run on Monday, which will be a breeze.  We started 7 weeks ago (although we are only on week 5) thinking that we would never reach the goal of jogging 20 minutes, but we have.  I don’t think that I have every been able to jog this long in my life.

My thoughts now:
I wonder if it will be easier as the weeks continue on (only 4 more left)?  Our obstacles now – the weather, sickness, and injuries – not that we can’t do it.  We have been really fortunate to have good weather.  We haven’t had to run in the rain.  It was a bit chilly this morning but we soon warmed up after jogging for a few minutes.  Only two injuries.  One is ongoing, but hopefully Julie’s shin’s will get better even though she is still running on them.

Just wanted to give a shout out to God for giving us good weather to run in, keeping us safe and giving us the encouragement and strength to run, especially today when we were tired and jogged the long one. Thanks God, for keeping us going when we didn’t want to!

Week 6 begins Monday!