What do we do? We Swim!

I've been insanely busy at work and with my kids soccer season starting up a couple of weeks ago, so I've not maintained my blog schedule very well.

I've stopped running temporarily.  I'm trying to give my IT band time to heal completely before going back to it.  I'm still planning on the 5K on 9/26, but I'll most likely be walking a good portion of it.  I'm trying to not let that get to me because I know the more I think about it, the harder I'm going to push myself on race-day.  The last thing I need to do is go from not running for several weeks to trying to run a full 5K.  To avoid that, I may go into it with a schedule of running and walking that I commit to, no matter what. 

In the meantime, I've spent some time on the elliptical machine and swimming.  My swim goggles came in earlier this week and I've started the 0 to 1650 program.  So far, week one is kicking my butt.  I'm on day two.  It calls for 700 total yards, which I'm doing, but not exactly as written.  My plan is to keep doing the week one program until I can do it exactly as it is written before moving on to week two.  I can do 50 yards before having to stop for a short breather.  I'm basically doing the whole thing 50 yards at a time with a break for 10-15 breaths between each 50 yards until I get to the set of four 25s at the end.  I'm hoping on my next swim I can get in a full 100 yards at least once without stopping for a break. I've found the key is to slow down, especially my legs.  Kicking uses some serious oxygen.  I've found swimming to be a much more challenging cardio workout than either running or the elliptical machine.  When I go back to running, I'm expecting breathing to be a breeze (pun intended).  I need to get back on the elliptical some days, though, to keep my legs in shape. 

As for running, I don't know when I'll start back.  I want to give everything plenty of time to rest before getting back in the groove.  When I do start, I'm wondering if I should just start back at the beginning of C25K and see how it goes.  There's a 5K on Thanksgiving day that I would tentatively like to do, but I'm afraid to set a goal to be able to run it because I tend to push myself to the point of burn out when I have a goal.  If I start back on day one on 9/26, the Thanksgiving Day 5K could theoretically be my C25K graduation run.  I don't want to set that as a goal, though, because I feel like that's at least part of what has me sitting on the bench right now.  If I set it as a goal, I'll feel obligated to push myself through every workout as written, no matter what hurts.

For now, I'll just keep swimming.