… and walked… yes, mostly walked. But I did run too!
Today is Saturday and it was a gorgeous day here in London. The temperature was about 15C in the afternoon so I decided to lace up and go for a run.
As I looked at my Nike+ app, I realized that the last time I ran outside was in August of last year. Yikes.
Since then I have put on about 12 pounds and have really become sedentary. I knew it was going to be a hard run, so I decided to take it really easy: I walked/jogged for 5km, which took me about 41 minutes to complete. 
At the top of my game, back in 2012, I could do a 5k in 29 minutes.
The main point today was to get out there and break a sweat.
Working out is such a mind game: first you don’t want to do it, then you start it and really don’t want to do it, but you keep going and when you are done it feels amazing.
So I feel really good about it!
The Fitbit
I also wanted to talk about the Fitbit Surge.
Because we at Automattic work from our homes, the company decided to give free Fitbits to all employees as an encouragement to exercise. I have been a fan of fitness wearables for a while now, and was perfectly happy with my awesome Basis Peak fitness tracker which I bought last year.
But hey, free Fitbit! So I gladly accepted the perk and have been wearing an orange Fitbit Surge for a few months. Here’s what it looks like:
While I have been enjoying its step-counting feature, today was the first time I actually took it out on a run.
What a great little helper it was!
First, you start by letting it know that you are starting a run and that you want it to track your position via GPS. This allows the Fitbit to calculate your pace and distance, which are then prominently displayed while you run.
At every 1km, the Fitbit buzzes and shows you the average pace for that km and how long it took you to run it.
Wearing a device like this is a great way to stay engaged during your run and to get some encouragement to pick up the pace.
My legs don’t hurt too bad right now, so I’m hoping to get out there tomorrow again.
Thanks for reading and keeping up with my journey. I am planning to blog at least once a week now, so get ready for a lot more content 🙂