THE POST WITHOUT A TITLE

I thought about titling this post "NINE WEEKS", but then you'd all have thought I was announcing a fifth pregnancy.  

I thought about titling this post "FRAUD", but then you'd all have thought we were the victim of a crime.

I thought about titling this post "PARTNERS IN CRIME", but then you'd all have thought I was a criminal.

I thought about titling this post "SHOCKING NEWS", but then you'd all have thought we'd decided to become eggplant farmers.

I thought about titling this post "HOORAY!", but then you'd all have thought Tim had signed a contract for the upcoming school year. 

None of those things would have been true.

I'll tell you what is true, though. 

NINE WEEKS ago I made a spontaneous decision.

I chose to commit FRAUD, to deceive most of my family into believing I was doing something that I wasn't actually doing.

I included Devon in my plan and we became PARTNERS IN CRIME.

You may want to sit down to hear our SHOCKING NEWS.

But I'm confident you'll say HOORAY! when you hear what we did.

Ready?

Are you sure?

Ok.  I'll give you some hints through pictures we took tonight.

First clue.

We put on shoes.

Any idea what we did?

Second clue.

We used a stopwatch.

Figure it out yet?

Third clue.

We worked up a sweat.

Got it?

If not, then I'll tell you.

We completed C25K. That's Couch-to-5K, in case you've never heard of it. It's a program that takes you from being sedentary (hence the couch part of the name) to running three miles or thirty minutes in 9 weeks.

I told the fam that Devon and I were going for a walk one night, then sat him down on the curb and told him my plan. Neither of us were runners. Both of us would benefit from aerobic exercise. I wanted to spend more time with him, as he was still in public school when we started. He loves being sneaky and I didn't want anyone to know we were doing the program until we'd completed it. So, in heat and rain, mornings and evenings, and in various neighborhoods in our town, we did it.

Each workout starts with a five minute walk and by the end of the program you're running a solid thirty minutes after that walk. We were so incredibly pathetic at the beginning! We could hardly run our 60 second intervals, which included 90 second breaks after each one, without feeling like we were going to go into cardiac arrest and have our legs fall off. For the last week, though, we've easily run for thirty minutes straight. Devon is running about 2.50 miles and I'm running about 3.00, as I run a little bit faster and will sometimes go ahead of him for a while, then loop back and rerun a section of the course with him, then run ahead again and repeat the process. 

Devon has been a champ, reminding me to slow down sometimes, particularly in the beginning when I'd think I was a female Prefontaine and start picking up speed early in the run. He's powered through on some hot runs, kept going on a couple runs when he was tired, grumpy, and would have rather been doing anything else, politely told me when he didn't want to talk, chatted with me about all sorts of stuff on most of our runs, and helped me find as many sprinklers to run through as we possibly could.

We set three goals to keep ourselves going. At the end of the first and second three week periods Devon was rewarded with the candy of his choice. Skittles and Starburst, respectively. The reward for completing the entire program is going to be for both of us - a Cold Stone date where, thanks to gift cards, we will each order as much ice cream as we want.  

We showed the pictures in this post to the other Ws as soon as we walked in the door tonight and confessed that we've been deceiving them for the last two months. They were totally surprised and impressed, especially Tim and Silas, who are both naturally athletic and can randomly decide to go run a couple miles when they haven't exercised in months, yet know that Devon and I aren't wired like that. Such a fun surprise!

I think the best part of the whole thing was a couple of weeks ago when I overheard Tim say something to Devs about how they should run together, even though the only way Devon's gone with him and Silas in the past is if he got to ride his bike while they ran. Without missing a beat, Devon said, "I hate running!"  I was in the other room and just chuckled, giving him a sneaky wink when I walked by a minute later. The fam had no clue that Mr. I Hate Running had been running for almost two months. Ha!

Anyway, we're going to keep running, but we'll make it be about distance, rather than time, from here on out. I'm going to come up with a few different routes that I know are three miles, then we'll just run them in whatever amount of time it takes us.

And that's that.

One person who hates running and has tried unsuccessfully to do it a few times in the past ... and one person who hates running and has deliberately avoided it in the past .. have faithfully run three times a week ... for nine weeks ... and aren't going to stop.