During the trip, we had the (mis)fortune of having a scale in the changing rooms at the ryokan where we stayed. I weighed in at 59.6kgs. It was pretty shocking for me, actually. Ever since I managed to get under 60kg, I felt like I didn't want to go back.
I stopped going to the gym, but I did start taking barre classes and gymnastics. I guess without the cardio aspect of it, I wasn't able to maintain the same weight while eating as much as I do.
When I first reached my fitness goal while still at the gym, the personal trainer suggested I set a new goal of trying to run in a marathon. I laughed at him, because I've never been a runner. I run to get exercise, but it's not something I particularly enjoy like I enjoy playing games, or cooking. But there's someone I work with who took up running to lose a bit of weight after having a kid, and she now runs in marathons. So if she can take care of two kids, work, and train for marathons, what's my excuse?
Enter the Couch to 10K app - because you should go hard or go home, right? It's pretty much the Couch to 5K app, but extended for 6 extra weeks to get to 10K. The idea is that you run for three 30 minute sessions a week, for 8 weeks to get to 5k and 14 weeks to get to 10k. Although I looked at some of the later runs, as I couldn't work out how you could go from a couch potato to being able to run 5kms in 30 minutes (including warm up and cool down) and it seems some of the later runs are much longer (~50 mins).
The app works by alternating periods of walking and running, with the app telling you when to change. As you progress, the total time spent running increases. I like this better than just running on my own, as I find that the hardest part for me is pushing myself. I'll have some days where I'll push myself really hard as I feel motivated, and other days where I start making excuses like I've had a long week at work, so I need to go easy.
My first run was yesterday, and it wasn't too difficult. My only issue is that my current earphones aren't very good, and I ended up hearing a lot of ambient noise. That made it quite difficult to hear some of the prompts to change speed. I actually ended up missing a prompt to start walking, and I was beginning to get quite tired, wondering when it was time to change when I checked my phone to see that there was only 30s left in this walking interval (that is 90s long). I couldn't find an option to increase the volume of the voice but not the background music.
On the plus side, it was nice to listen to all the CDs I just bought. Disney songs make such good running music for me.
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