With my 2014 loss of fitness, loss of confidence, loss of running buddies (those people and dogs who would occasionally run with me), loss of focus, and gain in weight, getting back to running was never going to be a pretty sight. I had to start somewhere, though, and although I did the 5km parkrun on New Year's Day, I don't really consider that "training" - that began yesterday, and it wasn't much to write home about...
I decided that I will focus on the shorter distance as I get my weight down and fitness up - that's how I very first started, 4½ years ago. I didn't do my first 5km run until I'd been doing treadmill runs and shorter outside runs for a good 6 months or more, back then! I'm not going to leave it so long this time, but for maybe 4-6 weeks I do intend to focus on shorter runs, building speed and confidence on the much shorter distances (doing speedwork and re-learning to cover the distance without walking, over various distances from 1km up to 2 miles, e.g.). Yesterday I went out and started with a very short run - after a warm-up, I ran a distance just shy of 1 mile, a hilly loop of a local park that I can do again from time to time, to track improvement. Then I went for a swim - swam 20 lengths of the 25m pool, which was better than I thought I'd do, because it's been so long since I last went swimming!! Once again, I allowed 'other people' to dictate what I did - I'm not sure why I get so wound up about other swimmers' selfishness, but I'm always the one who gets out early when other people are being oblivious...!! It was a good swim, in the main, though - just slow and steady breast stroke, but like I say, more laps than i thought I'd manage, so I'm pleased about that. (Also, just relieved to actually still fit in my swimsuit, haha!)
Today, I met up with my personal trainer at the gym, and we took a whole load of measurements (weight, body fat, waist and hips, blood pressure, etc) and did some fitness tests that I'll repeat on a regular basis. It really does feel like this is a start point, even though I've been regularly going to the gym all of last year - and so although my 'scores' in the fitness test are poorer than what I could do 3 or 4 years ago, I'm really going to have to stop thinking like that. They're where I am right now - doesn't matter about the past, all that matters is where I go from here. So, the 1km treadmill run - I did it in 7:10, which is the fastest I've done in a very long time. I was struggling at the end, but I think overall I was a little conservative with my pace at the beginning (I increased it as I went along), and although I was breathing very hard and really pretty tired when I finished, 'back in the day' I used to almost fall off the treadmill with jelly legs after a time trial, so I know there's more to give. This is a great start point, though.
I've signed up to a few races this year, and at the moment I see my main running goal as a half marathon in September. I want to get a PB there - which, to put it into context with this morning's tough time trial, means averaging sub 7:44 kilometres, for 21kms. Eeek! Lots of work to do, but I'm up for it. Start small, work hard, and build from there.
Your did a double - a run and swimming in one, that has to be good for building fitness :-)
ReplyDeleteWell done on the time trail, good to see that things are improving. I wouldn't worry about 7:44 seaming like an big ask, as you loose weight and rebuild your fitness the amount of effort required to maintain a given pace will get much easier.
Over the weekend I came across an interesting article from a coach that has turned his back on hard/easy style training, getting his athletes to run consistent mileage and intensity every day and reports good results:
http://www.coacheseducation.com/xc/jack_farrell_july_00.htm
My own experience isn't too far off this. While it might be more difficult to fit in, doing a modest bout of exercise each day looks to be more effective than more intensive/longer sessions every second/third day. Even if you can't fit it in everyday, the more often you can manage the better. The key to exercising regularly without getting run down/exhausted/injured is keeping each bout of training relatively modest in intensity and duration, and only slowly build up both as your body gets stronger.
I suspect it might be that the recovery during sleep is crucial element in why doing training every day is so effective. If the first night after a bout of exercise is when our response to exercise is at it's highest then we would expect to maximize this response over the whole week you'd want to provide stimulus every day so that every night you get the most benefit. I don't think I've worded that well... Ack, I'm an engineer not a writer :-)
Your aim for walking a minimum number of steps each day will certainly go some way to this goal, potentially you could balance things out in terms of effort by doing more walking on days you aren't in the gym or running so that the total stimulus each day is broadly similar. Such an approach could alter which groups of muscles you stress, but you still get a small dosage of growth hormone from each different type of exercise.
On the tests for progress front, rather than doing an all out time trail, what you could do is do treadmill test for a constant distance and speed each time and measure your heart rate. As you get fitter you will find your average heart rate for a given pace will go down. You can also record the estimate of the number of calories burned in the test and compare this over time - as you get fitter the reported number of calories burned should go down. The progress of the heart rate during the test is also an indicator of fitness, the slower it rises the less stress your body is under. Finally measuring how long your heart rate decreases (i.e. how long does it take for your HR to drop 40bpm) after you stop is also a great indicator of improving aerobic fitness.
The advantage of a HR time trail is that it doesn't need to be all out, in fact can form part of standard training. For instance if you always do a 1km warm up at say 9 min/km pace then you could check you HR during this warm up and note the results down each day. You will see ups and downs due to outside stress, colds, lack of sleep etc, but you should start to see patterns.
Once you get used to use HR monitors in this way you can even start to spot when you about to come down with a cold or that outside stresses are overloading your body. If you spot this then back off with the training so it's a low key sessions that doesn't add stress, but instead reduces it.
Best of luck.