30 Days of 5K - Day 1

Over the next 30 days, I will be challenging myself to run a minimum of 5k daily. For those of us using Freedom Units, that's 3.1 miles. This will be the absolute minimum distance. Since my daughter was born, I haven’t maintained a consistent running practice. In fact, this is undoubtedly the worst cardiovascular shape I have been in in my life. It’s sickening. I feel like garbage daily, but also lazy for being winded doing normal exercise.

I hope for a general increase in fitness. A slight loss of excess fat would be beneficial as well. I have a feeling I’ll develop some shin splints in the beginning, which I’ll try to avoid by avoiding running on concrete, cycling through different shoes, prehab, and stretching. Recovery will be the key component during the 30 days. The actual running is easy compared to the work of proper recovery. I’ll also try to start by running at a very slow pace and potentially taking walking breaks to keep up good form.

I’ve done daily running previously with varying minimum distances from 1-5 miles a day with varying levels of success. I figured this is the easiest way to start getting back into good running shape without overthinking the process. Personally, I need daily accountability when trying to be successful in any endeavor. I don’t do well with moderation. Jumping in headfirst is the easiest way to get started and build up habits.

What Redditors think they will look like trying to complete more than two long runs in a week

Another reason I would like to do this is due to dissatisfaction with the online fitness community and some of the lies they peddle to people who are too inexperienced to know better. It gets frustrating to see and hear people telling beginner runners that they can only run three times weekly, or they will be injured, or that they cannot increase their weekly mileage by more than 10%. There are limitations for some individuals based on their current level of fitness and history of injury. However, there are no hard and fast rules as to what you can and can’t do. Listen to your body and enjoy the process. Do what works for you.

I could say the same sentiment in relation to the lifting community, but I will save that for another post. My point is that I am sick of weak people giving weak advice. Let this be an example that someone who is out of shape can push themselves to do a moderate amount of work daily to see improvement.

I will do daily updates on Instagram and weekly updates on the blog. Follow along on Instagram for all the gritty daily details. Let’s see where this takes us.