Saturday 17 March 2007

New Farm Park

This morning I got out of bed at 5:30am (!!!!!!) and left home at 6am to get to New Farm park a little early to have a run before meeting friends for breakfast. You know, getting out of bed that early wasn't even hard. I was even looking forward to getting out there and running. On the way I took a wrong turn in the car and was mad at myself that I'd cost myself running time!!! I had to have a little chuckle to myself ... what's happened to me???

How accurate is googlemaps/mapmyrun.com??? I checked out the park on their maps and they reckon a touch over 1km around the park ... according to my trip computer in the car (which I know isn't the best measure) it was only 900m ... I know most serious runners will use a Garmin to measure a course, but in the absence of a runner's best friend, would you trust the google maps or the car? Not that I'm obsessing over it, but I did 4 laps of the park - so either 3.6 or 4km, depending on which way you want to look at it.

Didn't time my run this morning. The first 5 minutes were a struggle, couldn't find my rhythm and the legs felt really heavy, but that passed and by the time I had to stop because my friends were there with breakfast, I felt as if I could go another 4 laps. Just got out there and had fun. Lots of other runners out there who I grinned st (just for you Gnome - your advice was running through my mind!!).

I have to say, I really enjoyed being out there this morning, which makes me really happy - I've got to a point in my life where I really enjoy exercising. I can see what it does for me mentally and emotionally as well as physically. My entire life I've been the one who felt too self concious and too afraid to get out there and try these kind of things. I never never never thought I would be someone who enjoyed going to the gym and someone who ran, let alone ran on a regular basis and enjoying it. To this day I have a memory burned into my brain ofthe boys at primary school calling me "duck waddle". I don't know why - I wasn't particularly overweight as a child until I reached the latter part of high school, and even then I wasn't obese, just a bit chubby. But I never thought I would be able to run, ever. And everytime I did run that memory of being called that name would creep into my thoughts and I'd feel so uncomfortable. Normally I think people are looking at me, laughing at me, mocking me. Slowly I'm getting to realise that's not the case. Slowly I'm starting to not worry about what the cars passing are thinking, what the other runners are thinking. Slowly I'm starting to realise that I can do this and it's making a difference to my life and the life of my family.

Wow - I don't know where that tumbled out from!!!!

So back to this morning ... I turned up for breakfast in my running gear, all sweaty, and they were all most impressed and I got lost of "oh, I can't run" comments followed by a multitude of excuses "I'm too unco-ordinated" "I'm too unfit" blah blah blah ... I've heard it all before ... that was me a few months ago!! So I just laughed and said "Yeah, that's what I used to say"

I was very good at breakfast, skipping the cupcakes and pastries people had brought along and only had fruit and yoghurt.

While I was running a running club was converging in the car park and they started their run. I stopped on one of my laps and spoke to the guy in charge. Gnome - I liked your advice of just going out and having fun, and I'm going to do that ... on 2 of my runs per week!!! The other one I think I'm going to join this group - they meet at locations near me - the furtherst being new farm park, the others being the city botanicalgardens, UQ, southbank and KP. And the times are good for me too - early Saturday mornings. I've checked out a few other clubs but the times seemed a little off for me. I'm going to start that in April because I have a few things coming up over the next few weekends.

Foodwise, I've promised myself I'm going to start tracking on Monday. I'm doing so well in the exercise department and I'm just letting myself down when it comes to food. In fact, A today made a comment that what I had achieved was "amazing". So that was nice.

Friday I went to my Box class at the gym. After I got Drew to show me some exercises to strengthen my knees as I'm still getting a bit of soreness there. He also suggested I investigate new shoes ... this fitness business is not cheap, I tell you! The old knees weren't feeling too bad after the run today and the ankle feels pretty good.

better go put the kiddies to bed, A's gone to his brother's to watch the AFL.

3 comments:

Kathy said...

Sarah, I so relate to what you're saying. I wonder what's happened to me too. Isn't running wonderful?

It's great to read about your transformation, and encouraging to read that you're going to run with a group. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm nearly there. I'm going to run with a group of women from the gym on Monday.

Hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend. Good luck with the food tracking. I'm sure you'll succeed.

Celeste said...

I would definitely trust Google maps before I trusted the odometer in the car! I got caught out when I first started and "measured" 4km in the car, but when I measured it out on Gmaps it was 3.5km! D'oh! Then I got Percy (my Garmin) and it was the same as Gmaps. So go with Gmaps. Plus, you can measure it accurately even where there is no road.

TA and the Gnome said...

Running with a group that supports and encourages you is great! You'll get so much out of it. Just be prepared to walk away if they turn out to be the kind that belittle or discourage (but runners are never like that! :-) :-))

If you're not sure, just put a note on CR and ask the Brizzy folk about them.

Gnome