I did it! I ran for 20 minutes!

My total route (which took almost exactly 40 minutes) looked like this:

And this is the part of the route that I actually ran.

I don’t know that I have ever been prouder of myself. Ever.

I drove the route first, just to get some geographical bearings, and I was really intimidated. It felt like I was driving forever. I think it was just because I was in a part of town I’m not used to. A very nice part of town, might I add. With a significant police presence as well. Strange.

Anyway, when I drove the route, it didn’t seem all that hilly. I was wrong. There were a few long, slow climbs. I hate them. But I’ve learned that it is okay for me to break my rhythm. One of the reasons I really struggled in the beginning was because I insisted on maintaining my pace no matter the terrain. Now I’m giving myself permission to take hills slower and to slow down after the hill to recover. I know that sounds silly that I had to give myself permission to break my pace, but I thought that anything less was unacceptable, like I might as well have stopped running and just walked. That’s just not the case.

Was 20 straight minutes hard? Yes and no. My playlist was perfect. That helped a lot. But it wasn’t as hard as I thought. I really struggled more in the first few weeks – when I was running for 60 seconds. Sometimes the last 10 seconds were absolute torture. There were sometimes on Week 2 when I couldn’t even finish the 90 second runs.  But on Week 3, I decided that I wasn’t going to stop early. I could slow down as much as I needed to, but I would not stop early.

At the end of my run, was I exhausted? Eh. I was tired. Could I have kept running? Yes.

It’s a good thing because I was still about a mile from my car.

This is just as big as the day I bought all those clothes at the Limited.

I started this round of C25K exactly a month ago. I had ran Week 1 for several weeks in a row, and August 7th was my first day of the last round of Week 1. A month ago, I struggled to run for 60 straight seconds. And today I ran for 20 minutes, 1200 straight seconds.

I rock.

And I’m really sweaty. Gotta take care of that. And then go to Kent’s for grilled fish.

As you can see, it turned into a beautiful day.

Yay me!