Transplant Trot

I signed up for the Moncton Transplant Trot 5km today, to run it and everything! I signed Isaiah up for the 10km and I now realize it's his birthday weekend. Happy Birthday!

I hope to do better than three years ago when we participated and I walked slowly due to my inability to breathe. My goal then was to walk 5km in a hour, which I did but barely. I don't have a goal set for this year because I have no idea how fast I jog (not very) but I bet it'll be comfortably under a hour.

The Trot is at the end of April so I have time to get ready. It's to raise money for the NB Transplant Association which is a very good cause. I know Amy has used their resources to find out what is covered regarding lung transplants as a resident of NB (she's not heading to Toronto yet, just likes to be more prepared with information than I was). And the Canadian Transplant Association exists to promote organ donation which is a cause I'm 100% behind.

Since my hospital incident in Dec, which I'm calling Poopmas 2016, I've been getting back into my regular exercise program but have had to reduce everything to make up for the lost time. I'm confident I can build it back up though.

I've had fairly good success with the couch to 5km program. Well, I did until I stopped following it. I built up to jogging for 25 minutes at a time but since my 'break' I've gone back to two minute jog and one minute walk. Today I did some 5 minute spurts so I am building back up. I do find it easier psychologically to have mini breaks in between the jogging times so I'll probably stick with some variation of that rather than a solid 25 or 30 minute jog.

The program did help with offering guidelines for how much to intensity to increase each week so I would recommend it for anyone starting out. However, I had to build up for a long time to get to their "week 1" suggestion and tended to repeat weeks if I felt I wasn't ready physically to move onto the next level. So it's good as long as you're aware that the "run a 5km in 8 weeks!"claim may not be realistic. Better to go slow and not bust out your knee, which was my fear the entire time.

I know that by using our treadmill to exercise, it's a bit deceiving about my ability because it doesn't translate to real jogging. But it's so much easier than going outside or even to the exercise track at the community center so I'll stick with it for now. When it warms up again, I'll head back outside. So sometime in April. Just in time for the Transplant Trot!