Crunch Time

For those of you not familiar with the grand traditions of ASU: every year, to celebrate the end of the year, tens of thousands of students from all four campuses celebrate by taking off their clothes and donating them to charity. Then, they run around the Tempe campus half-naked. I’m pretty sure total nudity isn’t actually allowed, but I bet there are some brave souls who’ve done it, or at least tried. It’s ASU, after all. People do that on the weekends for kicks.

Since it’s my last year at ASU (again: when did that happen!?), I’ve decided that THIS is the year I will participate in the Undie Run. It’s been on my Adventure List for four years (#140) now and, unless I stick around for my Master’s, this will be my last opportunity to run around half-naked on campus.

And then I realized that, well, this means running around campus half-naked.

Gulp.

I’m more than a little body-conscious and I probably don’t have anywhere near enough self-confidence to even run around campus in a bikini, so…time to look into #18 on my list- getting back into running.

I used to run all the time when I was younger, and well into my teens, but then asthma and fibromyalgia decided to put an end to that for a while. I’ve got things under control for the most part these days. The asthma means I wouldn’t be able to run outside as much as I want to, especially not on a field (jeez, Undie Run might not even be a possibility for me now that I think about it), but the complex I live in has a gym with a very nice collection of treadmills, so I’m hoping to use those to my advantage.

I plan on using the walk/run method to get back into it. One of those interval setups: walk for 7 minutes, jog for 1 minute, lather, rinse, repeat a set of three for a week; walk for 5 minutes, jog for 2 minutes, lather, rinse, repeat a set of three for a week…you get the idea. I don’t know how long it will take me to work back up to the actual running part, but even if I can’t pull off an hour-long run anymore, I’ll take what I can get. I really miss running.

This is a little broader than just running, too. I wouldn’t just run, there would be conditioning/stretching involved as well. Maybe I’ll even cross #95: Take a yoga class off my list during this endeavor. And there will probably be some situps involved…actually, a lot of situps.

If there are any runners, yoga practitioners, or anyone else who has helpful exercise/running/stretching tips, feel free to share. I’m probably going to need all the advice I can get for this one.