Finding my running feet again.
It’s been a few weeks since I started back at my running post injury help, and this week was the first time I managed to run 3 times plus do yoga. My totals thus far are not overly exciting but I present them to you none the less. And for the record I’d like to brag that today’s run was outside and the only one that I ran a sub 7:00 pace. So running outside and listening to my body still works for me!
Jan 21-27 = 2.74km (1 run)
Jan 28-Feb 3 = 5.48km (2 runs x 20 min – 3/1)
Feb 4-10 = 5.96km (2 runs x 20 min – 4/1)
Feb 11-17 = 6.76km (2 runs x 25 minutes – 4/1)
Feb 18-24 = 11.24km (3 runs – 2x 30 min + 1x 25 min – 4/1)
So you can see I have been moving my distance up slowly, though I did have a big jump this week, but that was just from managing to finally get that third run in. If I had only counted the 2 I usually do it would have been 8.6km so the increase is happening slowly. I also started out running 3 minutes and walking 1. Now I have gone up to running 4 minutes and them walking 1. I think next week I will focus on running my 3 times, and doing all three of them for 30 minutes so that I know my body is okay with that, and then I will either bump it up to 35 minutes or push myself to try a 5/1. Right now I think the 35 minutes would be better to start out with, since I could finally hit 5km on the treadmill and that is a HUGE thing for me mentally! But at the same time 30 minutes divides into 6 as easily as it does 5, though honestly, I could bump the 35 to 36 when I swap and it wouldn’t matter.
Another great thing would be once I hit 5km, I won’t have to push myself as hard. That might sound a little odd, but running for 15 or 20 minutes just seems silly to me, but a 5km run (which takes me 32-37 minutes on average) is no big deal. So once I am at 35/36 minutes I feel as if I can stop pushing myself on the weekday runs and use all the 10% I’m allowed to increase by on one run to try and get a bit more distance in.
When ever I train or run a lot at home, I find one or two runs tend to be the simple, easy type runs and then one (two in training – hello tempo or speed, and distance) tends to be the one I push myself at. So once I hit my usual threshold I can up the distance and start to run outside again more. As of late I haven’t been running outside because my shortest route is 5.2km and I am not running long enough to hit that. So once I up myself to 35 minutes, I will do that one outside the first week and if I hit 35 and am not home I’ll just have to walk the rest of the way and look forward to making it the next time.
So while my mileage is not very much and I’m bummed I can’t run my half-marathon in April I wanted to, I’ll focus on getting speedy for my 5km and 8km races in April, as soon as my physiotherapist says I’m good to go on speed work again.