She's off.

Text sent to Shawn today at 3:16 p.m.: "Gasp. Wheeze. Huff. Puff. Pant."

Translation? Week 1; Day 1 completed.

It wasn't pretty. (Ok, well, the scenery along the lakeshore path and Montrose Harbor was. My performance left something to be desired.) But it could have definitely sucked more. So, I'll look at that as a glass-half full approach.

In our first post, Shawn and I mentioned that we're following the Couch-to-5K program. It's essentially structured interval training, designed to build up cardio and endurance over nine weeks. For the first week, after a short warm up, you run for 60 seconds, and walk for 90. Repeat eight times. You repeat the workout three times during the week. Each week, you run more and walk less.

I don't want to spend the entire run looking at my watch, or worse, counting the slooooowly moving second hand. So I'm running to a The Chubby Jones Podcast. After the first work out, I pretty much decided the chick who put together the podcast kicks total ass. She's obviously running while she records it, and cuts into the music only to tell you when to run, when to stop, when to walk, when to not. But she also thinks the way I do. And I definitely laughed out loud when she said "well, this sucks." Or "Maybe I shouldn't have eaten that Thai food for lunch."

Snicker. Somehow, she kept me running AND made me hungry at the same time.

A few technical notes/thoughts:

_ I need to own more workout clothing with pockets. Because I'm not sure I'm going to want to stuff an iPod between two sports bras for the whole nine weeks. (What!? Totally not an overshare. I look at it as more athletic engineering geniusness. I needed some place to store it and had no pockets and no armband. And thanks to trial and error during triathlon training, I learned that sweat + electronics stored in cleavage = BAD IDEA.

_ I've got a shopping problem, so I'm a little jealous of Shawn's new shoes. This jealousy is, of course, totally misplaced, since I did the same thing in May when I got the crazy idea to do a triathlon. I should note, however, that I did NOT choose my shoes because they happen to be pink. (See picture above.) It was just sheer planetary alignment that the dudes at the running store told me they'd work best for me. I was trying to explain this to Shawn. His response? "Who knew fate was color-coordinated?" Smartass.

_ I will make a zillion dollars if I can invent some kind of athletic Spanx. Or, like, a sports bra for your ass.