My Journey With Weight Loss – Shout Out to My Coach

Finally decent weather has arrived. That meant yesterday for one of my walks I was able to get off the treadmill and head down to the beach. It was just stunningly beautiful out and that 1 1/2 hours spent walking just flew by. The only downside is walking up a steep hill in order to get back home but I’m more than willing to do that as a tradeoff for enjoying the outdoors.

Today, on the advice of my coach, I increased my running intervals. If you recall last week I had gotten to the point that I was starting to enjoy my training after having taken a little break the week before. I had become quite comfortable with walking 1:30 minutes then running 2:30 minutes (8 intervals 3 days a week). I let my coach know it was actually becoming easier so we upped the ante, 2:00 minutes walking and 3:00 minutes running again for 8 intervals. I was a bit nervous this morning about the 3:00 minutes of running but turns out my endurance level was absolutely ready to do this.

While I was attending a virtual convention this weekend I did some research on running training just because this has been going well. I was stunned to learn what some of these training programs recommend. I mean seriously, they believe someone like me can go from non runner to running a 5k with only 8 weeks of training? That just made me realize I needed to do a shout out to my coach, Kelly, for how she has set up my program.

Kelly has made it clear since she stepped up to coach me that her goal was to get me to a 10k but that to do that we would be going slowly. She repeats to me every week that we are building endurance and slow steady progress leads to injury free training. I have so say that she is right. If you had told me 3 months ago when I started training that I would be able to run a total of 24 minutes (which is what I did today) and feel pretty good at the end of it I would have fallen over with laughter. But, apparently I can do it.

So, if you are thinking or starting a training program, find a good coach like Kelly. Sure, I could have used another training program to get me to an end result quicker but I realize with my arthritis and being a couch potato for so long I likely would have suffered physically which of course would simply deter me from continuing. Instead I check in with my coach regularly, get tips of different strengthening exercises to try and every time I get encouragement to keep me motivated. That’s what you want in a coach