It is Not in Your Character to Give Up

That was my fortune in my fortune cookie yesterday. I had a 1/2 dish of pad thai with chicken according to calorie king that's roughly 560 Calories..but that's also all I had for lunch...It was a rush meal kind of day because I had to run an errand for the boss man and I had to make an important stop at REI....I needed a new toy :)

I got a sports watch :)

It's purple :)

I know a certain fashion conscious friend of mine is cringing right now... *cough*shoewhore*cough*... I like purple :). Plus I needed this kind of watch for a specific reason... I needed it to be light weight and have a stop watch... because I'm running with this baby.

Yesterday I got one of my co-workers motivated to go run with me. She's not a regular exerciser or runner for that matter so I told her don't worry we'll do a run/walk. I've talked about run/walks a bit on the blog. I really like them because it's a good way for beginners to mentally prepare themselves for a run. The idea is to run for 4 minutes walk for 1, then repeat. I think it helps beginners to push themselves because they know that little break is coming soon.

But even if you're not a beginner the break actually helps you to run a little faster..so even though you stop to walk you end up keeping the same pace you would if you had jogged straight through because you usually don't slow your jogging pace. It's a good way to train and build up your endurance.


She actually said to me a few days ago when we were talking about going for a run that she shouldn't run with me because she's not a runner and she felt like she shouldn't even bother trying to run...that maybe she should try it some other time.

My only response was well if you don't start now when are you ever going to?

To me it doesn't matter if you're not the best, it matters that you try!

What bothers me is that people give up before even trying..that my friends gets you no where!

So my new handy dandy little stop watch kept time for me. We made sure to stop every 1.25 miles to stretch and rest a bit, but by the end we completed 3.75 miles with hills. For me that's not much of a run anymore (a year ago I would have laughed at you if you asked me to run that far though), but for my co-worker it was a major accomplishment and she felt so good afterward! She said she never would have done it with out me, but I didn't do anything. I couldn't make her run with me she did that on her own...I just kept time ;)

So we're going to try and do this once a week and I'm working on getting a few other co-workers motivated to join in. Trust me ANYONE can try a run/walk.

I've also noticed my new stop watch will be handy for other things... office chair races, timing how long a windbag boss talks on the phone.... and in my case measuring timing myself to see how quickly I can blog. :)