Day 17, or: interval training is a bitch
(Why yes, I did go back and count up my training days in order to have a counter. Seventeen seems much more impressive than the 11 days I actually did what I was supposed to do, two of which are “rest.”)
I’m making baby steps. Not in running; in admitting to people that I am training for a half-marathon. A week ago, despite having paid for the damn thing, I was still telling people I was “supposedly” or “theoretically” or “allegedly” training for a half-marathon. But I’ve now confessed it to a couple of work peeps, and yesterday I told Lisa, the BURN founder/teacher, who treated it very seriously (this from the woman who called me “cutie” like five minutes before, who may be older than me but is literally half my size, so I’m not sure how the term applies, really) and told me about how her husband is a long-distance runner and how the spring (not the season) exercises in BURN can help with long-distance runners/athletes because they strengthen your IT band, or something. It’s all a little silly but does remind me of what my friend Amanda (a.k.a. akdobbins) told me about training for a race, which is that people will totally make accommodations for you when you tell them you have to run and therefore are going to be late to dinner, or whatever. Apparently people take you seriously, is the point, no matter how unseriously you may be taking yourself.
Today was my “intervals” day. I’ve read a lot — like, an embarrassing amount — of “Self,” “Shape,” “Fitness” etc. mags in my day, and they advocate interval training all the fricking time. Supposedly, it’s more effective for weight loss, although apparently exercise may not be really effective at all for weight loss, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, like most people, I suspect, who read these stupid magazines, I had never tried interval training because it seemed awfully complicated. Who has time to change the settings on their treadmill, elliptical etc. every minute to increase/decrease their “rate of perceived exertion”?
Well, today, I did. And it was hard. I’m writing this hours later, and so some of the difficulty has worn off (the way people say the pain of childbirth gets forgotten), but at the time, yes. Hard. I never run that fast, plus my legs were a little sore, and my joints are always on the verge of rebelling. But it was also doable, it turns out, and very satisfying. I ran for half the time I have been, and still felt like I’d put in a real workout. And according to the machine, I burned 300+ calories in just 22 minutes. Running 5mph for 30 minutes doesn’t do that.
I started by running 5.5mph for three minutes, and then I upped it to 6.7mph for a minute, then back to 5.5mph, then back up to 6.7mph, and so on until I’d done a total of two miles. I know 6.7 isn’t exactly a sprint, but for me it’s a genuine run. By comparison, when I was more seriously running before (last summer, also on the treadmill), the highest I ever went was 6mph, and not usually for more than a few minutes. So this felt… fast.
And to permit myself a moment of vanity: I was running on a treadmill that faces a floor-to-ceiling window, and at times I was somewhat impressed to see my own legs in the reflection, running running away. Sad, but true.
Next week, I’m going to do 5.7 or so in the “slower” parts, and then try to get to 7mph in the fast parts.
Summary:
- 2.15 miles (I ran farther than two so I could get to 300 calories; it was a nice incentive to keep going past the time I’d allotted)
- 22:05 minutes
- 5.9mph average
