May 5, 2010

Well, Jodi and I made it to Bear Creek Park finally. She had never been here before and this was an old stomping ground for my partying days back in high school. Amy couldn't join us today, but hopefully she will get involved as soon as she has time.

I had bought some ankle braces at the CVS before our big run since I had time to kill before Jodi showed up. Once she was there, we did some serious leg stretching to get ready and then we took to the track like women on a mission. As a warmup (should always do a warmup before any strenous exercising), we decided to walk about a third of the track. After we reached the second pole after the first corner, we began running. We had already decided that this was going to be a light running event since I was easing into this whole running thing and Jodi had hurt her knees on a "PLF to your face" type landing. So, we were taking it easy, not balls to the walls people are coming after us to rape, mug, and murder us type running.

I hadn't ran with anyone before. The previous weeks had just been by myself and I'm easily distracted with my whining and huffing and puffing. It was nice. We talked about music and skydiving and trips coming up (Ireland, Morocco, etc.). The rule is that you should be able to hold a conversation with someone as you run. If you can't, then you need to walk or slow down your pace. Our conversation was fine.

We noticed that they had written quarter mile markers on the track, but only for parts of the track. The last one we saw was the 0.75 marker. Some people passed us, but mostly we were passing them. A lady with long, gray hair that was weird looking tried to compete with us at the end.

Since I'm not ready to run a full mile, we did both walking and running. However, Jodi said I did at least 75% of the mile running. That's good. Once we reached a turn with a large tree, we walked for the rest of the way back to the car. It was a perfect cool down and was probably close to 2 miles total. Not bad for our first training session.

We ended the day with some stretching and what was supposed to be post-run yoga stretching that I had seen on the Internet. Didn't turn out quite like I had planned. Some of it was good and some of it sucked due to the stickers, rocks, and ants on the ground. Right before our last goodbye, Jodi was probably seen picking stickers out of my butt. They weren't there when I sat down, but they were there when I tried to stretch. Thanks Jodi for the butt assist.

Things to get: A yoga matt, shorts with zipper pockets, and some kindof ipod arm carrier thing.

Things to bring: My camelback with water, especially when we start doing the longer miles.

Next up for today, same track time, same track channel.