For the First Time In a Long Time, I Ran a Mile

Okay, so technically, I've probably run quite a few miles since I started this whole thing.

However, technically, they haven't been all connected. One minute of run, one minute of slow walking (and gasping), one minute of run, one minute of walking, and so on.

Also, since I'm being "technical" here, "run" might be a less appropriate term than "jog" or perhaps even "gentle trot."

But I'm getting ahead of myself. This morning I had to register for a triathlon. Why this morning? Because the registration opened at 8:00am, precisely, and it is such a popular event that it filled in less than two hours last year.

I have a confession to make.

I lied on my registration.

I'd timed my swim at 12 minutes, as I mentioned a few entries ago. When I registered, I had to enter the time of my 500 yard swim because the swim is in a pool and they arrange the start times by swimmer pace.

I chopped a minute off of my actual time and entered 11 minutes on my registration.

In my defense, my timed swim was done while sick, while not having had a chance to do enough swimming prior to it, and after I'd just done a yoga class (and, I realized, later, after not eating for about 14 hours). So I'm thinking that I can take at least a minute off of my swim.

Or at least, I'd better.

Then, got my daughter up and took her to preschool. I also actually remembered that afterward, I would have to go see Amazing Dr. Amy. Unfortunately, since both Dr. Amy and my daughter's gymnastics lessons are a good 45 minute drive away (and close to each other), I had about 4 hours to kill in between.

I didn't want to waste time (or gas) driving home and back between the two, so when I picked up my daughter from preschool, I ran some errands on the way to Dr. Amy. When I got there, I rescheduled my next few appointments so that they wouldn't have such a large gap of time to fill.

Afterward, I decided I would work out since my athletic club has a location between Dr. Amy and gymnastics. They also have child care. She was asleep in her car seat when I arrived, and stayed asleep as I walked in, with my bag and my daughter on my shoulder.

I opted for a 10-time pass, which they neglected to mention would NOT be transferable to the club I normally go to until after I'd paid for it. After some complaining, they said they could transfer it, but I'd have to fill out a bunch of paperwork. Oh well.

I dropped off my daughter, and although the staff seemed really nice, there were about five kids crying in there, nonstop, the whole 10 minutes it took me to fill out registration paperwork (I didn't even get to the transfer stuff), and one in particular was banging on the small childproof door, wailing miserably.

He was clearly so upset that *I* wanted to pick him up and comfort him. For anyone that knows me, you know that this is terribly abnormal behavior as prior to having my daughter, I refused to deal with a child under the age of 6 if I could help it. Furthermore, my "tolerance" of young children, while considerably greater than before I had my own, is still pretty low. And here I was, wanting to comfort this poor little wailing thing.

Despite the noise, my daughter remained sound asleep on my shoulder and I attempted to lay her down, which of course promptly woke her up.

She was thrilled to be there, and I left, hoping that she wouldn't be one of the crying ones when I returned.

I started on the treadmill and after a couple minutes of walking, decided I'd try running a little bit. I set it just at 4 mph, which comes out to a 15 minute mile. V-e-r-y slow. It seemed like an easy enough pace that I thought I'd try a whole mile, without adjusting it up or down. To take that whole hour off of my time, I'm going to need to actually run, and although I've done a lot of interval training, I haven't truly done anything extended for endurance. (If you can even call a single 15 minute mile an endurance run.)

I made it, and actually felt okay. Not great, other than pleased I'd made it, but also not horrible. I finished with enough walking to make the treadmill time last 30 minutes.

Know what? I still HATE running.

When I wobbled myself off of the treadmill, I still had about one hour and 25 minutes left of child care time, so I decided to go for a swim. Since I still had my watch in my bag, I thought it would be a good idea to try and time my 500 again, especially since I wasn't completely honest in my triathlon entry.

I started swimming and despite my noseplug, was having water-in-my-nose problems. At partway into length 7, I actually had to stop, cough, and splutter out water.

Frustrated, I went back and stopped the watch, giving up on timing myself again.

I swam a lap and it went better than all the others I'd done, so I decided to try timing myself again.

Good news: Despite having just run a mile, and having swam 4 laps (8 lengths) prior, I managed to take 15 seconds off of my time already.

So, if I can actually kick this cold, and not exercise right before the swim, I bet the other 45 seconds should come off too.

With the child care, it worked so nicely that I decided to call Dr. Amy's office and reschedule (again) so that I could do this routine in the future. Thankfully, NONE of the kids were crying when I picked up my daughter, and she'd had fun (she didn't want to leave), so hopefully it won't be quite as chaotic in the future when I drop her off.