The End, The Beginning

Sunday’s half marathon was the accumulation of my month of running. The morning started off with a crazy downpour of rain mixed with the requisite lightning and thunder. This, as much as our alarm clock, awoke us. Happily, by the time we left our house to head down to the race it was a light sprinkling falling. By the time we were lined up with the masses it was merely windy and a little cold. What a great way to start the race, after several days of temps in the 90s with high humidity! Come midrace the sun was fairly warm, but certainly nothing to complain about. My only complaint was that water stops were in different places than past year, seemingly fewer and more spread out.

My time was a respectable (at least in my mind) 2 hours and 22 minutes. I would have liked under 2:15, but I got what I trained for. More importantly I never stepped in a puddle, so my feet were still happy at the finish.

I say “the end” but I hope to continue to run at least once a week. There’s just something relaxing about the road.

“The beginning” is a scarier path. Monday I did the Insanity fit test. Wow! Only 25 minutes to see where one is and it turned me into a sweaty messy ball of myself. Insanity is a 60 day at-home fitness program led by Shaun T. And I think his goal is to kill me.

Today was the first workout: a cardio plyo circuit. At 45 minutes long it has you sweating the whole time. And panting. I can see why those people on the TV have their heart rate monitors. My first impressions:

• This is a lot harder on my legs than running.
• This is a lot harder on my respiratory system than running.
• Clearly I need this.
• The shorter workouts (compared to P90X or P90X2) will be nice, though I’ll still need to get up at 4:30 to fit in the rest of my morning activities and have time to cool off after working out and before showering.