Starting C25K again, now, with actual running

Yesterday the Nerd and I spent an absolutely grueling day cleaning and organizing the house.  Lots and lots and lots of scrubbing and washing and scraping...  I woke up this morning barely able to move, almost crippled with back pain from all the bending and pushing and hefting.  Thank goodness for muscle relaxants and bags of frozen peas. 

I definitely did not need to work my upper body today after all of that, so today after loosening up my back I decided to go with the elliptical + C25K + elliptical cardio sandwich.  I will work my upper body again tomorrow, once my muscles have had a chance to recover somewhat from the beating I put on them yesterday.

This morning I decided to start the C25K program again, from the beginning.  Only this time, instead of hanging onto the treadmill for dear life during the run intervals, I was determined to actually run, like a normal person, without hanging on.  Big girl running.  I knew it would be challenging because I had not properly run for more than a few minutes the last time I did the C25K program, but I think there's an opportunity here to work on my stamina, done properly. 

I had some knee pain last week so I did not do the C25K, in the hopes that my knees would recover somewhat.  This seems to have worked.  I had minor twinges on the 5th interval this morning, but nothing significant, and overall the run was comfortable.  Today's set was 6 intervals of 1 minute running + 1.5 minute walking.  I did all 6 running intervals properly (i.e. without hanging onto the treadmill), which officially makes the 6 minutes I ran today the most I have ever run in my life. 

I was surprised at how challenging I found the running intervals this morning.  I do a lot of cardio on the elliptical, and yet the cardio of running on the treadmill is a different animal entirely.  It definitely makes me sweat, but it also makes me pant like I haven't panted since I first started working out.  It's like I am exercising for the first time. 

All in all, today's workout was a success.  I did the planned runs and I still had something left in the gas tank when I finished, which is more a moral triumph than anything else.  Tomorrow it will be back to the upper body workout - - hopefully I will have recovered sufficiently from my travails yesterday.