What's this? A running related post?

My week in review:

Tues-3 miles
Wed-1/2 hr of torture known as getting weighed, measured and fat caliper-ed, 1/2 hr of personal training
Thur-3 miles
Fri-1 hr personal training

Yep, that's right. Not only did I run more than once last week, I also exercised!!! Amazing, isn't it?

I have wanted to hire a personal trainer for a long time. But, hiring a personal trainer is about as cheap as hiring a personal chef or a personal assistant or a live-in housekeeper. I could never afford it. Thanks to a beefy tax return and some serious begging on my part (to my hubby), I finally managed to make it happen.

All the fat calipering was free last week. A fat calipering buffet as it were to try it out and see how I liked it. Truth be known, I loved nearly every free minute of the training. You can guess which minutes I did NOT like. I also did not like discovering my percentage of body fat. OK, so there were some unhappy moments.

But I shared my running injuries and my trainer wants to emphasize a lot of lower body work, lots of stretching and some toning work for on top. He convinces me that I will lose weight and that I will be able to plow up large hills and will become a better and faster runner. See why I liked him? He promises very good things!

We ended Friday's session with some painful stretching. He kept telling me to just breathe into it, let my body do the work and that he wouldn't hurt me. Some of the stretches hurt in a good way--that deep pain where you say, "OW--keep going!! More!" And some of it, I wanted to beg him to stop, even though I knew how much good it was doing. But I trusted him and went with it.

The amazing thing is that later that afternoon, for the first time in weeks, all of my shin pain went away.

And even more amazing, I went on a run alone in some light rain showers and enjoyed the scenery, lost in my thoughts, not paying attention to speed. And when I looked at my Garmin later, I saw that my fastest pace at some point was a 7:22. (Granted, it was probably for a microsecond but the fact that I didn't know it occurred until after the fact says something.)

Something tells me that hiring a trainer for the next 12 weeks is going to be a very good thing.