"I ran. I ran until my muscles burned and my veins pumped battery acid. Then I ran some more. " — Chuck Palahniuk

Wow. My lungs were really not on board with the running plan, today. Today was the first day of Week 5 in my quest to get in Spartan Shape... and it was Week 5, workout 3 of the Couch to 5K Podcast I'm following. Today's run called for a 5 minute warm-up walk, and then a straight 20 minute run. 

I set off. I walked to my running area,  hit the play button and did my best. I dug deep. Real deep... Sadly, I have to admit, this would be the first time I couldn't complete a Podcast/run exactly as directed. I finished the one before this just fine, so I moved on, but apparently, my body isn't quite up to the 20 minute straight out run, YET. 

Instead, I ended up running about 10 minutes, walking for less than 30 seconds (this was my self imposed rule. No "big" breaks), and then I had two more 20-30 second walking intervals in the last half of the run. All things considered, I think 20 minutes of running, with like 2 minutes of walking, spaced over tiny intervals, is pretty damn good. Again, I need to remind myself that when I started this 5 weeks ago, I could barely run ten minutes, out of the whole half hour workout. Today, I ran ALMOST 20 minutes straight, and then tacked on my usual extra two minutes running down the hill and through the parking lot, back to my walk home. 

It was tough though. I'm not going to lie, there was a moment somewhere around minute 15-16 that I wanted to quit. I heard myself start to say *pant, pant* "I can't do this...", at which point I had to mentally bitch slap myself and remind myself that THAT was not an option. I CAN in fact do this, I HAVE done this, and I WILL continue to do this. 

Just because I can't (YET) gracefully bound along for the entire 3 miles, doesn't mean I'm not succeeding. I have made huge progress in what I'm able to do, and I need to just keep pushing as hard as I can to move forward. What's that saying? "Rome wasn't built in a day."

I think I'm going to try and use today as an excuse to really regroup and refresh. I have to re-do my workout tracking spreadsheets (shut up. You need to track, and that seems organized and graph-able. lol) this afternoon, and look at my food intake a little bit. My weight has been plateauing some, so it's time, again, to be more mindful of what's going into my body. Bleh. 

Whew. Okay. Enough for today. 

The moral of the story: "Never, never, never quit." -Winston Churchill