It's COLD

It is, according to weather.com, 6 degrees (but feels like -5 degrees) in my location right now.

That's pretty cold.

I know it's pretty cold not just because weather dot com tells me it is, but also because I was just outside for half an hour, jogging and walking.

I didn't do as well as I had hoped. I went a little over a mile and I jogged about a third of it. I say I didn't do as well as I had hoped, but I'm also trying to start really slow so I don't get hurt. That's my biggest fear, that I'll get hurt and won't be able to go to basic. So, whilst I'm disappointed in myself because I didn't do more, I'm also okay with what I did this morning. I have some Army and Air Force cadence on my iPod ("Momma and Poppa were LYING IN BED!!!") and Epi is right, they really help with pacing and breathing. I managed to run for an entire one, which surprised me.

I got my heart rate up into the 140's and I kept it there the whole time. I'm pleased with that. I haven't done any exercise since September, so I'm really out of shape....as you can tell. As I can tell.

Tomorrow I'm going to do my 5 min warm up walking to the gym, and then I'm going to run to cadence on the treadmill. I'm thinking that perhaps jogging in a warmer environment might be condusive to being able to go further. There's a pool there too, so if I can find my Tyr two-piece I'm going to go to do some cool down and stretching in the water after I'm done running.

I'm on a 5 day a week schedule for 9 weeks. By the end of the 9 weeks I'm supposed to be able to run 3 miles in under 30 mins. Right now that seems like a pretty tall hill to climb...but I think that if I can do that comfortably, the runs in basic training won't be as bad.

By the way, the art of blowing a snot rocket is greatly underestimated. Force, trajectory, ambient temperature and breathing patterns all have to be taken into consideration in order for said rocket to be successful. If you miscalculate just a single one of the factors, you end up with a mess on your scarf, shirt, sleeve or even pant leg. I found that out the hard way today.