Wednesday, March 31, 2021. I’m on Day (2? 3? 4?) of a Couch-to-5K-to-10K-to-HalfMarathon-to-FullMarathon running program. I’m still pretty close to-Couch. Day 1 was a scheduled Rest day. I’m not kidding.
Monday (Day 2(?)), I completed the scheduled interval run: 10 x 1 minute running, 2 minutes walking. I added a 3 minute warm-up walk and a 3 minute cool-down walk for good measure. It went well, sort of. I was surprised how short 1 minute was, and how long 2 minutes could be. I learned that slowing from run-speed to walk-speed when you still feel energized and without pain can be uncomfortable. And about twenty minutes in, I managed to find myself within 50 yards of another Run-Walker moving in the same direction as home, so I spent several awkward intervals trying to avoid whatever it looked like- a man (me) running until a few steps behind a stranger, then walking behind them until a safe distance away, then chasing towards them again at run speed.
Today, after another Rest day, the program called for the same run as last time: 10 x 1min run, 1min walk. But for whatever reason, today’s run was totally different. Following the same there-and-back route as I did previously, I started with a double-distance goal: to reach the stoplight at the halfway point, and to make it all the way back home in the second half. (On Monday, I came up about 50 meters short of both distances). I did achieve both distance goals today, meaning that over the same period of time (34 total minutes, with 10 minutes of running) I ran and walked, on average, faster in those same intervals.
But with the increase in my running speed came leg pain. Fortunately, it was very much the healthy pain of worked muscles and not the warning alarm that something is horribly wrong with my running form or body. I’m not sure if it was because of my body’s better preparedness for the run/break intervals of the exercise because of Monday’s previous experience, or motivation from course familiarity and my distance goals, or that I wasn’t concerned with trying to alter my moving speed to avoid appearing like a stalker, but this time I definitely felt like I was exerting more energy, and the distance markers told me I was outpacing the other run the whole way through.
It struck me as a rare feeling, to be running (really running, between jogging and sprinting) so fast without pain. That ended after about the 4th minute of running. I managed to make the last few burn extra. In a few weeks, the program stops planning interval runs and switches to mile goals. That is, it stops planning runs based only on time and instead focuses exclusively on distances. I figure when that happens, I won’t have many opportunities to experience the first few seconds of high-speed running after a long walk break, but maybe if I stay with the training, the schedule will keep me on a pace where I can experience a little of that, even on the longer runs.
Tomorrow is “Cross-Training, 30-45 minutes.” I’ll probably use the elliptical. That’s different enough to be cross-training, right?
Out of Sight 