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As I mentioned in my recent state of the Sebastian, I tried and failed to run a marathon a few weeks ago largely because I couldn't keep up the training schedule whilst also commuting halfway across the country in two different directions. I'm now mostly only doing the weekly commute to Birmingham*, which actually allows me quite a lot of time for running, because there are fewer other things here to take up my time than in London, but a)I've been starting to feel a little bit bored of running long distances, and b)I'm going to be having some major surgery over the next couple of years; it's a three part operation with around six months healing in between, which means I'm not likely to be able to keep up the sort of sustained pattern of training I'll need to have more success at running a marathon until it's all finished.
So I had been thinking that I'd put the running on the back burner for a while and switch back to picking up heavy things and putting them down again as my main exercise, but then someone posted in my chorus's running group on Facebook about the Pride 10k and I thought I'd sign up, because "Hey, it's only 10k, I can do that without needing to train specifically, can't I?" Except of course then my competitive brain kicked in and said "I wonder how fast I could do it", and started looking up 10k training plans, and now I'm doing intervals and sprints and all that jazz, and have found a whole new burst of enthusiasm for running by doing it in a different way.
There's also the factor that as I understand it, much of the "wall" that you hit when running longer distances is caused by running for a long time, rather than just running for a long way, so if I can build up my speed over shorter distances, that should feed into a quicker base pace for the longer runs, and mean that I don't have quite as much stamina to build up when I go back to the marathon training in a couple of years.
*Except this week, when I'm going back to London mid-week to be sworn in as Churchwarden for another year and then returning to Birmingham the same evening, or next week, when I've got my last couple of days consultancy in Huddersfield, or three weeks after that when I've got a one-day meeting in York. But apart from all that... It's a good job I have a lot more energy since I stopped drinking.
So I had been thinking that I'd put the running on the back burner for a while and switch back to picking up heavy things and putting them down again as my main exercise, but then someone posted in my chorus's running group on Facebook about the Pride 10k and I thought I'd sign up, because "Hey, it's only 10k, I can do that without needing to train specifically, can't I?" Except of course then my competitive brain kicked in and said "I wonder how fast I could do it", and started looking up 10k training plans, and now I'm doing intervals and sprints and all that jazz, and have found a whole new burst of enthusiasm for running by doing it in a different way.
There's also the factor that as I understand it, much of the "wall" that you hit when running longer distances is caused by running for a long time, rather than just running for a long way, so if I can build up my speed over shorter distances, that should feed into a quicker base pace for the longer runs, and mean that I don't have quite as much stamina to build up when I go back to the marathon training in a couple of years.
*Except this week, when I'm going back to London mid-week to be sworn in as Churchwarden for another year and then returning to Birmingham the same evening, or next week, when I've got my last couple of days consultancy in Huddersfield, or three weeks after that when I've got a one-day meeting in York. But apart from all that... It's a good job I have a lot more energy since I stopped drinking.
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Date: 2018-06-20 09:46 am (UTC)From:The bit about length of time being tiring is interesting. I find that even with walking, so that a couple of hours of slow pottering around the shops can be as tiring as a couple of hours' hiking, even though the former might only cover a couple of miles and the latter six or seven.