I want the record to show I have lived in a lot of places that has encouraged my vanity. Back when I lived in Rhode Island, it didn’t really matter what my weight was – 9 months out of the year I was wearing puffy jackets and jeans… which was great considering the only exercise I got was walking around the corner to the local cheese shop. I gained close to 30 pounds when I lived there. It was glorious.
But when I moved to Las Vegas and was surrounded by plastic Barbie dolls – slutty edition – I went from a solid Rhode Island 7 to a Sin City 3. And while I was able to shed most of the weight, moving to Florida didn’t help my vanity. I felt the need to be beach body ready come Memorial Day. I’m not the only one, I bet the months of March and April are the scariest months for men, because everywhere they turn they are faced with a woman who hasn’t eaten a carb for five days. It’s a real life Walking Dead.
So yes, my vanity got the best of me, but I argue I had no choice! When it came time for me to get in shape for the summer, I had to choose – cut out drinking, cut out eating, or pick up working out. Since I’m drinking a Magic Hat #9 while I write this, I’m obviously not cutting out drinking, and my recent post on making Sour Patch Kids sugar cookies is a good indicator that I’m not curtailing my eating habits. I guess I’m going to increase my work out regime.
I mean, anything was better than my work out plan at the time – wake up at 5:30am twice a week to perform corpse pose for 20 minutes while Yoga with Adriene tries to convince me I’m a lotus flower waiting to bloom. Yeah, I can do better.
So what is the best workout one can get in the smallest amount of time? It’s apparently running. If you know of something less horrible, PLEASE let me know. But if 30 minutes a day, 4 times a week, was all I needed to get in shape for summer, I could manage.
Couch to 5K in six weeks, here I come.
Week 1 – HATE isn’t a strong enough word for how I feel.
This week is, in my opinion, the worst week in the whole program. It tricks you into thinking you are only running 3x, since the last ‘run’ is a brisk walk. But don’t be fooled. One minute walk/run intervals are the devil. After every run this week, I came home to tell my husband through labored breathing – I. Hate. Running.
Week 2 – We should only be running if it’s to run from something.
I’m not gonna lie, Week 2 isn’t much better. A three minute run before breaking into a walk feels like a lifetime. It doesn’t help that I have to wake up at 5am to get this workout in, it’s the only time of the day I’m sans child. After each run this week, I groggily enter into the house at 5:45am and stare at my sleeping son through the monitor, feelings of envy and jealousy (and nausea) pulsing through me.
Week 3 – I can still quit. I barely told anyone I was doing this.
This is the make or break week. It’s this week you start scrolling through your Facebook page and pray to dear God you didn’t tell anyone about this. If a Sarah quits a 5K training plan but no one is around to witness it, did it ever happen?
Week 4 – I don’t believe in any exercise that requires stretching beforehand.
As someone who use to consider stretching as exercise, it’s a rude awakening that by Week 4, running for eight minutes straight requires you stretch beforehand. Now I have to wake up even earlier to get my damn stretching in. And no, corpse pose apparently isn’t stretching. I found that out the hard way.
Week 5 – Running and I are slowly becoming frenemies.
Come on, running and I were never going to be friends, but friend-enemies, sure. Like any frenemy, you often hang out with them during weird hours so no one sees you, you realize shortly in that you hate them, but after you part ways, the good ole days cloud your memory and you find yourself saying, ‘I should ring her up, I miss her. Why did we stop hanging out?’ Oh yeah – because she’s crazy.
Week 6 – Over it. Let’s run the damn thing so I can post a 40min 5K route to Facebook.
When the week of the actual 5K is upon you, it’s stressful. You secretly hope you’ll knock out an incredible time, but in reality you know you’re about to run the most pathetic 40 minute 5K out there. That was me. So with flashlight in hand, on an early Tuesday morning, I set out to run a 5K shuffle, complete with constant thoughts of giving up.
But I did it. In 34 minutes, I did it. Not as bad as I was thinking, but still slow enough that someone doing a brisk walk would easily pass me. That run was so slow, you swear I was running backwards.
And I wouldn’t say it got me beach body ready. I did drop a couple pounds, but let’s just say cover ups will still be my friend this summer. A true friend… unlike running.
