When I run by myself, I’ve noticed that I will stop running and take a walk break sooner than I will if I’m running with someone.  Obviously it’s so much easier to stop when I’m alone.  When I run with someone (one or more, it doesn’t matter), I want to keep up as best I can and I keep going longer as if I don’t want to disappoint them or something similar.   When I ran with two wonderful ladies last week, I surprised myself that they got me to go 2.5 miles without stopping at a pretty consistent pace.  I was thrilled.   I went into the 4 mile run on Saturday on cloud 9 thinking I would run maybe at least 3 of the 4 non-stop.  But once I lost sight of the group, I started to slow way down and walk more than I wanted too.  So I’ve got to figure out how to push myself when I’m alone, like when I run with a friend/group.

Fast forward to yesterday, I was meeting one of the two ladies I ran with the week before.  We headed out just after 7 pm.  As we slowly made our way through the neighborhood, I had several times when I wanted to stop but I just kept going.  We made it over 1.5 miles before we took our first break.  I truly tried to keep going until I just couldn’t hold my pace any longer.  We took 2 main walk breaks and held a 12 min/mile pace through out the entire run.  I’m getting a little bit faster as I keep doing this.  We finished just under 40 min and that is right on with my fastest 5k so I know I have more speed in me, I just have to keep pushing.  I tried to use the runkeeper app on my phone during this run to see how well it would work, especially since I love data.  nope, didn’t work at all.  My cell signal/gps signal was too low.  I was hoping to have a cool graph/map to show off but nope not today.

Made it back to zumba this morning after missing last week (my big boy was sick) and a new running friend made it to class.  It was her first zumba class ever and she did great.  I’ve got her convinced to come every week and get her booty shakin on.  🙂  I went and picked up my husband for a picnic lunch on the lake.  We ate pretty quickly and then headed off on a walk.  We walked back to his work and then I turned around and headed back to the car.  I tried out the app again and it kept talking to me even though I wasn’t doing anything or touching my phone so I had to turn the volume all the way down.  Super annoying!!!  Turns out it tracked the first half of the walk but not the second half while I was running.  May have a better argument to convince the hubby to get me a garmin watch  since he witnessed the annoying part first hand.  It’s not that he wont’ let me get one, we just are discussing it and talking about our monthly budget.  Started running shortly after saying goodbye to my husband.  I’m trudging along slowly and in my head already having the internal battle of how far I want to run.  The first thought was I really would like to run all the way back to the car.  I know I can make it that far and I’ve run most of that non-stop anyway.  Then I start arguing with myself over wanting to slow down and walk.  This time I just kept going.  Each time I said to myself, I want to walk, I said well what would happen if you just kept running?  That’s what you did last night!!!  Before I knew it I was coming up on the last handful of turns on the golf cart paths to my car.  That’s when the reasoning of you made it this far, I will be mad at myself if I stop now.

So I’m starting to see what I can just push through versus when I really need to take a walk break to recover.  It sucks but it will make me stronger in the long run.  Then I can figure out how to go faster.  One thing at a time.  🙂

One last thing – I’m down another 1.5 inches from my ribcage and upper knees.  Very cool, sorry no new pictures but if I change again next week I will retake some.  My grand total is 24 inches.  I’ve lost more than that but I don’t know how much more.  I didn’t start measuring my ribcage and upper knees (lower thigh, area just above my knee) until a month or so ago.  I know these two areas have shrunk because you can see it in my pictures (for my ribcage) and my biking shorts are looser in the lower thigh area.  So I’m going to say I’ve lost 24+ inches from my body in the past 9 months.  A friend made a really neat colored chart with her 1 year measurement differences.  I already told her I’m going to steal the idea (she said go ahead) for when I hit my 1 yr running anniversary.  It’s coming up faster than I thought.  First week in December will be here before I know it.

So I’m headed to the Georgia Tech football game on Saturday and I’ve got my 3-4 mile (I will probably do 4 miles) on Sunday with a running friend all lined up.  Then I will figure out my schedule for the next week that of course is subject to change at any moment.  lol