Monday, December 14, 2009

Just a short note...

...to document my last two runs. I ran for about 36 mins on Saturday (50% more than any other day, qualifying it as a "long run" in my weak workout book), putting in just shy of 3 miles. Again, not a very fast pace, but that's not my point right now.

Tonight I changed my run/walk ratio to 1:30 each and ran about 2 1/4 miles in about 30 minutes. I plan to do the same on Wednesday and Friday, then keep the same ratio for 45 minutes on Saturday. Here's hoping.

One thing I noticed about my workout tonigh was that by the end of it, I wasn't running all that fast. Let me clarify. I wasn't pushing myself as hard. When I first stared tonight, I was pretty tired after 90 seconds. I measure relative tiredness by how many steps I can take with each inhale/exhale. So "pretty tired" is when I reach 2 steps per inhale, 2 per exhale. That's where I was after my first couple of sets. So to keep from killing myself, I consciously slowed down. But by the end of my workout, I was still at 3/3, even after extending my run an extra 45 seconds. I obviously slowed down more than I meant to - at least on those last couple of sets. The question is, how do I find the balance between not pushing myself too hard, so I hate doing this, and not pushing myself hard enough, so I don't actually get any better?

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