Broken Woman to Iron Man - we've made it to 5K

left, right, left right...go through the checklist in your head...

1. Keep Smiling!! (Smiling helps you feel good about your run, and releases pleasure hormones called endorphins, natural painkillers and antidepressant hormones such as serotonin!!! You'll love it!!)

2. Keep Flexible!! (Keep your hands loose, your arms freely swinging, You need flexibility in your muscles, your tendons, ligaments, and joints so you don't get injured!)

3. Chin up! But not too far up!! look straight ahead - have Good Posture!! (The efficiency of your running is completely impacted by your posture - so important to ensure everything is aligned)

I glance at my watch.  I'm not nearly through the checklist and it's time to walk again.  Today is my last 1 min walk, 1 min run. Today I will go for 40 minutes... ooops time to run again!!

Concentrate on that posture - direct quote from the CHI RUNNING website (an excellent book to read - website blog found here) "According to Yoga teachers, along with many other mainstream body movement disciplines, good posture involves having a reasonably straight spine with not too much straightness and not too much bend. The more you slump, the more your body’s muscles need to work to hold you upright. Poor posture not only restricts the circulation of blood to your muscles and organs but also inhibits the oxygen supply to your brain."





4. Keep the Pelvis level ! You want your pelvis level from side to side.  Remember those sit ups and crunches you hated doing ?? Keep doing them and right now, while you are running, engage them.  Hold that pelvis level!

5. Lean forward! Let gravity take you there and simply keep lifting up your feet to propel you forward! If you want to run faster lean forward more.. to slow down, lean back - simple right!! 

Check watch - still a few more seconds but lean back because I'm back up at 160 again and I'm NOT supposed to be pumping blood that hard.

6. Notice your breathing - I'm definitely going too fast, deep, slow breaths. I count.. in 2, 3... out 2, 3 and I slow my pace to align with my breathing... In the beginning you can DEFINITELY expect to be out of breath - it is our muscles not yet equipped to take in enough oxygen to move as fast as you are moving them... watch your heart rate, and slow it down - don't worry - I promise.. in no time we'll be able to up our pace.

Walking is wonderful - I'm loving the little breaks every minute.. makes the time go by so fast.  In fact I'm already half way (20 times completed) and on my way back home.

7. Kick your feet to your bum! Use your heels to kick back instead of your calves to pull up - it'll seem weird at first but trust me - it will save you many calf cramps!! 

8. Squeeze your bum! yes, using your quads (front of your thighs) to pull up your leg and engage your glutes as you are leaning forward will truly improve your posture and form... CHI RUNNING has practices in it that coach you into the correct form. I've loved the advice from this book and definitely notice a difference.

9. Stay Relaxed! So important to continue to check in with yourself... how is your neck? is it tight and full of tension? How are your shoulders? Relaxed, down and loose? How are your arms? Swinging easy beside you? Not crossing in front? How are your foot steps? Should be light and short... not long and causing unnecessary force to your frame... 

10. Be proud - just going outside in running gear is motivation to be proud of.  DID I say to Keep SMILING!!!!????

Today's run was excellent. I didn't feel great, honestly.. but I enjoyed completing it - and I hit 5K.  Results for your interest below.  

I let my heart rate get up a little too high on this one but the good news is how quick it came back down.  Also you'll see my pace a few times got pretty quick (likely was crossing the busy intersection then!! But it's exciting to see some improvement.)

The rest of this week I'll start to reduce the walk times and increase the run times.  30 second walks and 1.5 minute runs.. Come on out with me.  You can do this too... Here we go!!

Broken Woman to Iron Man - tough weeks make you tougher

This week was supposed to be three runs where you walk 1 min and run 1 min, 15 times... I got out twice and found both times difficult to complete.  Whatever knocks you down, just makes you stronger, get back up and go again.  Work, Family, Life, Mental Fatigue... so many reasons to stay down, don't.  Get up again.  One step at a time.

Overall, I'm getting there. Truly.  (inner voice is saying FIND THE POSITIVITY in everything, and success will find you)  I'm now walking with a good stride for the full 30 minutes, I'm running a good pace and feeling comfortable (6 min/km) but my heart rate is still exceedingly high for that 1min.  Upwards of 160 bpm to keep my body moving. So its going to be important to continue to watch and work on getting myself more efficient.

I'm going to keep practicing this as I really do believe the theories that if we train our body to be efficient, we can go on forever... Rich Roll, during a 3 hour Sunday run, wrote the following... "Sunday: 3 hour run.  When I woke up, my legs were so thrashed, I seriously doubted whether I was going to be able to handle this run.  When faced with these thoughts, I just have to turn my brain off and go.  I loaded up my fuel belt and headed out.  My legs were very heavy the first 30 minutes, but they loosened up and I ended up feeling fine.  I built into the run and ended up feeling pretty good, a big surprise and great indication of just how massive my endurance base is right now.  I worked on my climbing and descents, trying to acclimate my legs to the pounding of going downhill, which can bury a runner on a long run when not used to this.  I also had no issues keeping my heart rate squarely in Zone 2 between 130 – 140 bpm, which has become very comfortable — I could run all day in this zone."

This is so inspiring to me.. Rich wrote this after extensive endurance racing and training... if he can get there, ANYONE can.  We humans have an infinite store of ability, we only need believe, and proceed to tap into it.

In order to figure out where you should be training, you need to first find out your maximum heart rate. This is one way to determine it:  "The basic way to calculate your maximum heart rate is to subtract your age from 220. For example, if you're 45 years old, subtract 45 from 220 to get a maximum heart rate of 175. This is the maximum number of times your heart should beat per minute during exercise."

So they (google) say... that performing an activity for a long period of time i.e. endurance running, you truly don't want your heart rate higher than 75%. You want to stay in the aerobic zone where energy will be most efficiently distributed in your body. 

This article is a good one with some of the science behind training in this lower heart rate zone.  It goes through a good explanation of what each zone is, how you can tell if your in it, and some of the key benefits and disadvantages of each zone. 

Another website I found has much more extensive details on the Science behind these techniques if you are interested here.

In short... the beginning is hard and it takes time for us to get used to the movements we are performing... don't ever go so hard that you hurt yourself, and if you feel your heart rate pounding, slow down... and don't feel guilty for going slowly.. you are actually burning more fat rather than carbs now - and your body is learning to burn this fuel efficiently!!! Keep on moving forward, that is our only goal. :)