My body can do stuff (ES)

So I've been pretty consistent with exercising every morning. I miss a few days here and there but I'd say I average at least 5 days per week (at the unholy time of about 5.45am). I don't appear to have lost any weight although I'm not 100% sure my scales are accurate. Yesterday I did the get-off-get-on-again thing and somehow gained a whole kilo. Did it again and gained another 500g. Kept doing it out of curiosity and managed to lose all that "weight" again in small increments over 5 minutes or so. Very strange, and it's the only time the scales have ever done that. I tested it again this morning and it was completely consistent, but of course now I don't know if the consistent weight it showed me is my ACTUAL weight. I think I might go with measurements instead.

A few months ago I finally got my act together and saw a podiatrist, who expressed great horror at a number of problems with my feet and ankles. She prescribed orthotics, which I have been wearing and noticing the difference. The pain in the side of my knee, which had been waking me up at night, has pretty much gone. I thought this all boded well, so a few weeks ago when on the treadmill I increased the speed to a jog. Not a good idea, as it turns out - I was limping within five steps because I had shooting pain in my knee, in a different spot from the previous pain. This is not unexpected because my knees and ankles are still getting used to behaving like normal knees and ankles instead of wobbling all over the place. Still, disappointing.

Earlier this week I decided to give jogging a go again, to see if the knee has improved. To my delight, I managed half a minute of jogging without pain. I've been testing it out each day, doing bursts of 1-2 minutes of jogging. And it's been fine, but the really great thing is that I am able to jog at a much higher speed than I've ever been able to do previously. When I was doing C25K before I usually jogged at a very shuffly and slow 6.5kmh, reducing to 6kmh when I got tired. I walked at 5-5.5kmh. Now I am walking at 6-6.5kmh and jogging at 7.5-8kmh. This is HUGE for me. I think I have jogged at 7.5kmh just once before, and I managed maybe 30 seconds. Now I'm doing 2 minutes at 8kmh and I'm still feeling okay when I finish. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am about this. I said in a previous blog entry that I'm concentrating on health and strength... and I think it's working. I am actually feeling fitter and stronger. How great is that??