Gratituesday: An Exercise Partner

At the beginning of the year, I had grand and glorious plans of training to run a 5k at the beginning of March.

Oh yes. It was fun. Until I got started.

I did fine, actually. It was exceedingly difficult and I ran very slow but I was doing it. For someone who had never run any distance before, I did pretty well.

Well, the 5k in March never happened. I started to have excruciating knee pain. I could hardly walk, let alone run, for about 4-6 weeks. Added to the knee pain was that I could hardly breathe while running. I mean, why bother running if I have to use my asthma inhaler 3 times in 45 minutes when I can stay at home and feel great and never use meds for months at a time?

So I stopped running. I still walked every now and then, especially with the dog and childcare kids.

I didn't really like running that well anyways. So it wasn't much of a loss there.

But I still knew I needed to exercise more.

Fast forward to June. Somehow, I'm not sure how but a friend and I decided to meet a couple of times that week at a local park with a walking trail to walk together.

That was in June. And we're still going strong. We've met consistently 2-3 times each week since we started and I've even been motivated to exercise by myself on mornings that we don't meet.

After walking briskly for about 6 weeks, we decided to start running together. I was hesitant to get back into running(really, was I ever into it in the first place?!?)but you know what? It is a lot easier and more fun to do it with someone else. I am also much stronger this time around. And the park is a much nicer place to run than my neighborhood which tended to be a bit hilly and steep.

I'm not going to say that running is easy. It's not. I'm still slow and it's really hard work! But having a running companion make sit more fun and keeps me motivated when I want to quit! (And I do the same for her.)

We quote Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength!" as we run together. If I am not out of breath, I sing it. Yeah, I'm just crazy like that.

I've been able to run 20 minutes straight this week which is the farthest I've ever done. Next week, I will start running a 30 minute stretch. After that, I'll work up to running 3.2 miles which is a 5k.

Oh yeah, I'm planning to run my first 5k on December 5th. I'm so excited!

Starting last week, we're now meeting the days we don't run or walk to do some strength training. One day we do exercises for our upper body and the other the lower body. Ouch!!! But it's great to have a friend to do this with.

So today, I'm grateful for a walking, running and exercise partner who also happens to be a great chiropractor!;-)

**Thanks to Laura at Heavenly Homemakers for hosting Gratituesday!