So Friday was an “off” day, so we just walked for 30 minutes. Boring as hell, but necessary, especially since we’re just starting to run, and I’m horribly out of shape.

Saturday night, I noticed that after walking for like 30 seconds, my shins were killing me. I’ve had a little shin pain when starting out like that, but it went away, especially once I started running. Last night, it did not. I tried to run a little to see if it would fix things, but it didn’t and I had to quit early. Turns out that, even though none of the beginner guides for running I read mentioned it, stretching before you start is a bad idea. If you stretch at all you should wait until after walking or jogging slowly for 5 minutes. I had been stretching the whole time but didn’t have this kind of reaction… I guess I just happened to stretch it too far.

Tonight’s run was much better, though still bad. I didn’t stretch, and I could tell a difference immediately. I was much more comfortable in the beginning than I have been. However, hurting myself a little yesterday caught up to me, and after walking 5 minutes and running 4, I decided to just walk out the rest of the 30 minutes.

Katie and I both got Nike + attachments for our iPods, so we can track things and compare runs to see where we can improve. You can see my run data to the left. Unfortunately, I paused the workout and even though I thought I had resumed it, I apparently did not, so the current data only reflects the first 13 minutes. Yay for being able to mix running with geekiness.

Tomorrow is a full off day. No running or walking, to give the muscles time to recover and build up. Hopefully Tuesday will be a good satisfying run, I’m really missing it already. It’s discouraging to have two unsuccessful runs in a row, but you have to run before you walk I guess, no pun intended.