2016-02-20
in
3 min read
It isn’t an “ouch” but more of an “ugh” now, of course that was after a big “yay!” from how my hard workout went this afternoon. This week was my first week of really ramping up the running. I celebrated the first trot on a treadmill last week, but this was for real trying to build up my running back to where it was a few years ago. It went a lot better than I had expected, but I’m certainly feeling it a bit now.
First and foremost, I am on a ramp up. I’m not increasing my mileage, I’m doing the same 3-4 miles I have been walking. It’s just now I’m interlacing running intervals into the middle of it. I’m hyper-conservative when it comes to avoiding injuries. I am not one of those “pain makes you stronger” people. I don’t mind a little delayed onset muscle soreness but not too much. However I look out for any sensations, not even pain, in joints since those don’t have the same resiliency as muscles do. I’m not unrealistic that I will have soreness in places, or tightness in others. But It isn’t something I’m going to power through. It’s going to be something I monitor religiously and address through stretching, yoga, foam rolling, cross training, and modifying training volume if necessary.
Today was my first outdoor run in a while. After two treadmill sessions this week of several two minute run intervals over a three mile run I was looking forward to logging about four miles of trails and running at least eight minutes of that. Part of that running was going to be downhill, almost certainly none of it was going to be uphill. So I was really hoping for more like 10-12 minutes of running total. Running was going to start a quarter mile in and then I would play it by ear. I’d try to keep it in Zone 3 and slow down to a fast walk when I really started exceeding it.
The Garmin Training Center app conveniently breaks running speeds into ten zones. I’m counting “running” as any time I was in any of the jogging or running zones. When it is all tallied up it was just over 21 minutes of running in the whole 52 minutes of exercise. That totally blew threw my expectations! What I was really stoked about was that I was essentially averaging a ten minute mile pace over that distance. Yes, a bunch of that was downhill but most of it was straight and level or up and down terrain. Considering that on the treadmill at the gym I was completely blowing out my heart rate by the fourth set of ten minute mile paces for two minutes this was great.
I’ll be feeling it tomorrow I’m sure. I can already tell my ankles are a little tight and my muscles are a little sore. Tomorrow is a cross training day anyway. I’ll be sure to give them a little extra rest to boot.
Yet one more baby step towards the marathon!