Recruitment

One of the best things about being home for spring break is catching up with friends.  I got to go out with my best bud, we'll call her BLT (those are her initials for real!), on Saturday.  We hit up Target and while I was checking out the workout apparel, we got to talking about weight loss.  BLT started losing weight last spring.  She was the maid of honor in my wedding and I think she starting losing for my wedding.  Here we are looking fabulous:

Anyway, she's stuck with it and she's looking great.  I asked her how much she's lost so far.  Her reply: about 50 pounds.  50 pounds!  I told her that she looked great.  She admitted that she was happy about it, but that she'd hit a plateau and has been stuck for a number of weeks.  Then she dropped the bomb.  She wanted to start running to mix it up.

I had to stop myself from trying to impart every piece of advice I have.  I chose the some tips to help her get started and let her know that I was really excited for her.  I suppose that I had a bit of an ulterior motive - I've never really had a running buddy.  Patrick is over six feet tall and can run faster than me without trying, my dad and brother have both gotten speedier in the last year, and my mom and I only get to run together occasionally.  Maybe I'm putting the horse before the cart here, but we are both built similarly and I think if she sticks with it we could have very similar paces.  She did say that she wants to try to do a 5K this summer.

I gave her a call at the beginning of the week and we decided to head out together for a run on Tuesday.  It was on the cool side, but the sun was shining.  We headed out to try a loop in her neighborhood.  We went 2.60 miles in a little over 35 minutes.  We did a combination of running and walking and we went by how she was feeling.  Our pace was about 13:45 minutes per mile.  I was so impressed.  She said that she does a lot of walking at the gym and I think that really helped her transition to running.  Her biggest issue was her breathing.  I didn't really have any advice other than to try and find a pattern that's comfortable and to keep trying to run.  Anyone have any tips on breathing while running?

I had so much fun running with her.  I hope that BLT knows that I really meant it when I said I was proud of her and that she did an amazing job.  I think we might try to get in another run in this weekend before she has to go back to school.  Any favorite tips that you wish you knew when you started running?