Jen Runs Her First 5k
I love it when people set fitness goals and have the tenacity to finish them. Such is the case with my friend, Jen. Earlier this year we went to see the movie, “Brittany Runs a Marathon” and Jen was so inspired by it she said to me, “I want to run a 5k!”
Well, when you say something like that to a personal trainer like me, OF COURSE I was on board to help make that happen.
She only had 7 weeks to train for it and a busy work schedule that included traveling for her job to boot. Plus, she had never run before, had some medical issues and hadn’t exercised recently, so it was going to take some serious dedication on her part.
The first time we met we just walked around the trail once. We decided to use the Jeff Galloway method, which is to run for a minute and then walk for a minute with the goal being not to set any records but just to finish the race.
On her own she would run/walk for 30 minutes three times a week and then send me a video when she finished to hold herself accountable. We met every Sunday and slowly the miles increased from 1/4 mile, to 1 mile, 2 miles, then 3.1 miles – which is the length of a 5k race. Once we knew that she could handle the distance we started doing some speed work, including hill runs, suicide drills and fartlek runs.
The day of the race we were joined by my other client, Karen. We stuck with the plan and ran for one minute and walked for a minute and finished under an hour. She was so excited to realize that not only did she finish running her first 5k race, she also beat a bunch of people to the finish line!
I was, and am, so proud of her for meeting her fitness goal!! And the running bug has bitten her – she’s thinking about training for a 10k. We’ll keep you posted.
Lisa 😉
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Lisa Traugott is a personal trainer, Mom’s Choice Award writer, original cast member of FOX/John Cena’s “American Grit” and has a monthly fitness column on Bowflex.com. She won Ms. Costa Rica Sports Model 2017 and her transformation story was featured in Muscle & Fitness Hers, Good Day Austin, Great Day Houston and Austin Woman Magazine. She blogs at ShesLosingIt.com and is passionate about her clients.
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