Author: inkwell5

The whole “learning to run” line is in some ways a joke. I learned how to run before I learned how to remember. It’s not that I have no experience with the activity, but rather that I have never done it often enough; with uncountable days between attempts, my body just didn’t have the opportunity to respond with noticeable gains, whether those are measured by visual effects, energy increases, pain decreases, higher speeds, shorter times, whatever. I’ve never seen progress!

Progress (the kind in my head) requires focus, dedication, and consistency over a long period of time, not to mention effort, energy, and pain tolerance. It requires showing up every single day of the week, challenging yourself with perfect attendance rather than dismissing your own goals, silently muttering, “Well, I’ll try to get it in tomorrow, but not today.” It requires observing changes, graphing measurements and numbers, responding to the challenge offered by last week’s time. These are things I’ve never done before.

And so, when I say I perfectly followed the first 6 days of this running program, and it just-so-happened that only 3 of those days involved exercise, that’s a big ‘first’ for me: the first time I’ve run more than once in the same month in a long, long time. I’m excited to be following the schedule properly even if the expectations are currently lower than I could probably handle. Besides, this is the last week with three ‘Rest’s for over fourteen days! I need to take full advantage while I can.

I’m joking more than I should. While the Interval runs were wonky, I actually did better at each consecutive activity this week: A strange run Monday, the stranger repeat on Wednesday, then Thursday’s 40:00 elliptical, followed by 30:00 bike, followed by P90X’s 93:00 YogaX. I could tell that my legs, especially my hamstrings and glutes, were more ready for exercise each time. Even if I could go out and run 3 or 4 miles today, I don’t think I’m wasting time building to that (which will be 3 weeks from now, when it’s time for the 5k). I think if I ran closer to my physical limit, I could get a good score, but probably talk myself out of running again for a few months. I would go into it so out of shape that most of the hour-long run would be spent whining and grinding my joints. I won’t test my limits until I’ve already established the habit of showing up.

Every week has several ‘Training Run’ days with ‘Cross Training’ mixed in, and one “Long Run” couched between two ‘Rest Day’s. The Training Runs won’t be easy, but they’re the main course of the program. The Long Runs, however, are the performance days. If the Training Runs are the program’s bread and butter, the Long Runs are the cake. Each week’s Long Run stands further than the previous week’s, and much longer (hence the name) than any of the other weekly runs. Completing each one will feel like accomplishing a huge achievement, each finish line marking the furthest distance you’ve ever run. The Long Runs also build faster than the Training Runs, increasing their desirability ever loftier. Icing on the cake.

Tomorrow is this week’s Long Run, and it’s… well, it’s “1.5 miles (walk if needed).” I feel very defensive about how short that is (especially considering that I went further than 1.5 on Wednesday’s interval run). But that’s outside of the schedule. The schedule doesn’t mention speed, just distances and interval times. And the more “easy” the schedule appears, the more reason I have to follow it exactly. If it doesn’t take any work, why not do it?

My exercise this week included elliptical-running(?) and the outdoor intervals, but neither activity is quite running. The elliptical is so low-impact that it has never adequately prepared my joints for the stresses of actual jogging, and when I was out on the sidewalk, I was only running for 1 minute at a time. So instead of seeing 1.5 miles as the Shortest Planned Run Of My Life, I’m seeing it as the farthest consecutive run of the week, which is how my knees and ankles will experience it. I’ll run that 1.5 miles tomorrow with pride.

I expect my mind to wander over the next few weeks (and months), so I’m sure I’ll have plenty more strange topics to write about. I sometimes get an urge to share my thoughts when I’m running, and I tell myself to remember the thought for later. This is where I’ll put those thoughts. If you aren’t interested, I hope you haven’t read this far. If you are, there’s more to come.

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?