Yay!

It feels so good when I manage to pleasantly surprise myself.

I've been running on the treadmill to get my cardio endurance built up. I've never really been much of an outdoor runner for whatever reason. But between an article on treadmill vs. outdoor running this week on SparkPeople and knowing that I'm going to have to run outside for my state police test, I did a lot of thinking this week about doing some outdoor running. Hearing my dad complain about not being able to run outside when it's snowy and cold in Indiana didn't hurt, either. And really, the weather in Phoenix has been perfect for running recently.

I wasn't expecting it to be a good experience. I usually have a lot of trouble pacing myself when I run outside, and I end up completely out of breath and cramped up halfway through my workout. But I came up with a route through downtown Phoenix and took off at around 7pm. Unfortunately, I forgot to check the time when I left, but I did check it slightly after I started. When I got home and used mapmyrun.com to track my distance, I found out that I ran 1.42 miles in 16 minutes (and 1.72 miles overall).

For some people that might not sound like much, but it was so much better than I expected!

Of course, that time also includes waiting at stoplights, but right now I really appreciate that opportunity to stop and catch my breath during a run. I figure that I'll stay with my current route until it gets too easy, and then I'll try to find a track or a more unobstructed route. Where I live makes it kind of hard to choose between a busy road with lots of traffic/stoplights or a quiet street that might be more dangerous.

I ran outside again today and remembered to set my iPod's stopwatch as soon as I set off, so I ended up running the whole 1.72 miles in 21:21. Not too shabby, considering that the preliminary fitness test requires one to run 1.5 miles in 22 minutes. It was also really windy today, so that definitely didn't help my time. I also had to dodge a bunch of cosplayers downtown (I don't even know...).

I'm thinking that I'll stick to running outside on days when I plan on doing a short run, and stick to the treadmill when I'm going to do interval training. I also found two sites that I'm really excited about: One Hundred Pushups and Two Hundred Situps. Both of these are kind of like Couch-to-5k programs for their respective exercises. I'm thinking that this is exactly the kind of incremental step-by-step program I need to prepare for my fitness test. They seem pretty straightforward, so I should be able to stick with it.