Day one of 5k training

Hey all,

Today I did my first day of the training for my first ever 5k. I started the day out by buying saucony running shoes. They felt really light weight so they should hold up all right. The man who assisted me at Scheels had ran a few marathons so I felt like he knew what he was talking about. Shortly after getting my new kicks I went to the WRC (wellness recreation center) to start my first day of training.

The class I enrolled in is going to be 8 weeks long, and by the end of it I should be able to run a 5k without to much trouble. I met the gal who will be teaching the class. Her name is Emily and she seems pretty nice. She is a senior majoring in exercise science and is teaching two sections of the class. One meets M/W at 5:15 and the other meets T/Th at noon. I was the only person in our class today and I hope it stays like that because I enjoy the one on one attention.

Class started out by meeting to discuss my goals for the class. Ultimately I hope to be able to finish this 5k without any difficulties (basically I don't want anyone to have to give me CPR during or immediately after this race.) I also hope to finish in the top 40% of all those who run it. My long term goals are to be able to turn this into being able to run longer distances. I hope to complete a 1/2 marathon in September and in a year or two I hope to complete a full marathon. After talking goals, she taught me about proper running technique. One thing I had been doing wrong was I was looking at my feet alot. When you run you are supposed to look straight ahead. (Although if you're running outside you can look side to side a little bit) Also, Emily gave me some readings to do in order to learn more about proper running technique.

Once she was done teaching me about technique we went to the unidome to do a light jog. We started out by walking at a "normal" pace. I always thought I walked quickly, but this gal walked a little quicker than I did, but it wasn't a struggle to keep up. After a warm-up lap, we walked for 3 minutes and then jogged for a minute. We did this twice on the unidome track before we went upstairs and ran on the outer concourse. We did the 3 minute walk 1 minute jog twice more. All four times that I jogged I felt really good. We ended by walking around the track once more as a cool down period before we did some slight stretching to end our workout.

All in all it was a great workout. I know it doesn't seem like much but even the longest journeys begin with a single step.