3:1

I'm late in posting this, but since I'm "pre"-dating it, it'll be OK. Monday night, I did the first run of week 3. I made sure I ate a light dinner this time. It worked.

Week 3 is simply this: 2 repetitions of 90 seconds walking, 90 seconds running, then 3 minutes running, 3 minutes walking.

I really was psyching myself out about that 3 minutes. I got through the 90/90 easily, since I'd been doing that interval during week 2 (it was supposed to be 90 running and 2 minutes walking but I never adjusted it to get it right). When I got to the 3 minutes of running, I took a deep breath and dove in.

In so doing, I found a good thing about night runs: I can't see how much farther I have to go. I told myself I'd run at least 3 blocks before looking at my watch, which involved pressing the little "light" button in order to see the numbers. After 3 blocks, it was only 2:45, so I kept going.

When I stopped, my abs and chest felt tight and I had to "breathe down" - meaning I couldn't talk, couldn't drink, could hardly breathe and had to breathe through it until I felt semi-normal again.

This should have been my new turnaround point, but I didn't want to shorten my route, so I started my second 90 run and went up to my regular turnaround point. When I started the 90 second walk, I got this horrible catch in my right side. That's never happened before. So, I gave myself an extra 30 seconds walking - mostly because I didn't feel like I could do it without giving that catch some time to go away.

The second 3 minutes was easier than I thought it would be. So much so I added another 2 minutes at the end of my run. I told M, who was riding his bike alongside me, "this is overdrive". Indeed it was. My right knee ached (also never happened before) when I was done.