Run For Your Life

The girls and I made a goal at the beginning of the year to learn how to run a mile without stopping. I've only been able to do this once in my life, ten years ago when we lived in the hotel in Wisconsin. That took a summer of walking/running on a treadmill for 45 minutes a day. I figure this will take some time too.

The girls were eager to start right away, but we had to wait for the weather to be accommodating. It's been an exceptionally cold winter. We finally had a few days of warmth two weeks ago, so we started. We're following a program that is supposed to have you running in six weeks. However, that requires four warm days each week for us to be outside and we don't have that quite yet. We've had to modify the plan. That's okay, our goal is to run it by the end of the year, so we've got some wiggle room.

Cooper and Topher have joined us on each outing. Peter has tagged along on a few. We take the stroller with us for two reasons. The first is to carry the water bottles and jackets that are inevitably shed as we run. The second is for Topher. Some days he walks and runs most of the time. Some days he rides. And some days he gets in and out of the stroller as much as we'll let him.

The first day we did ten rounds of running for 30 seconds followed by 90 seconds of walking. After a few days of that we shifted to eight rounds of 60 seconds of running then 90 seconds of walking. Yesterday we moved to ten rounds of 60 seconds of running followed by 60 seconds of walking. 

Yesterday was rough for all of us. We really had to push ourselves to keep going, especially as we got closer to the end. Sophie dropped back just over halfway through and was having trouble running. Peter dropped back too and helped her by holding her hand and walking with her as I ran ahead with the others. Sophie and I were both impressed with his choice.

For most of our runs I have my phone (timer) in one hand and either the stroller or Topher's hand in the other. I spend so much time watching for cars and calling out when to jog and when to walk that I failed to take any documenting pictures for several days. I finally remembered last week. If you look at Cooper in the penultimate picture it'll give you a good idea of how tired we all are at the end. That's right, he rolled himself home in the stroller once Topher decided to finish on foot.