Road-running - I made one big mistake
May 5th 2008 06:22
The first few times I did a walk-run on the road, I walked up hills and ran on the flat. I covered mostly between 3 and 5km, and I made sure I was always puffing. Not out of control, but I wanted to keep my heart rate up, after all...
Over the next month or two, I managed to eliminate all the walking, and just ran the whole way. It was a little harder - I was puffing and sweating by the time I got home, but that's the whole idea, isn't it?
Including my walk-runs, I completed 39 runs like this. And toward the end of each, I was completely knackered. My times had only improved marginally, and I'd hardly lost any weight at all!
Sounding familiar?
So I started researching. I did a bit of reading on the Web, but couldn't make much sense of it. Then I posted a question on a running forum. And within seconds, I was told that I was doing it all wrong. Completely wrong!
Apparently I was running too hard.
I was shocked. How are you supposed to improve if you don't push yourself? You know the old saying, "No pain, no gain"!
But plenty of long-time, high-performing runners were telling me the same thing, so I thought it might be a good idea to listen.
They talked quite a bit about heart rates and maximum volume of blood flow, etc., (and I'll get into this - from the layperson's perspective - in my future posts), but the crux of their argument was that the only thing pushing hard is bound to do is cause injury. It's certainly no good if you're interested in improving your running performance, nor is it ideal for weight loss.
They recommended another approach entirely. A method that is so easy, it feels like cheating. So addictive, that weight loss becomes secondary. And so effective, that you start seeing results withing just a week or two.
Sound too good to be true? It's not. So stay tuned...
Over the next month or two, I managed to eliminate all the walking, and just ran the whole way. It was a little harder - I was puffing and sweating by the time I got home, but that's the whole idea, isn't it?
Including my walk-runs, I completed 39 runs like this. And toward the end of each, I was completely knackered. My times had only improved marginally, and I'd hardly lost any weight at all!
Sounding familiar?
So I started researching. I did a bit of reading on the Web, but couldn't make much sense of it. Then I posted a question on a running forum. And within seconds, I was told that I was doing it all wrong. Completely wrong!
Apparently I was running too hard.
I was shocked. How are you supposed to improve if you don't push yourself? You know the old saying, "No pain, no gain"!
But plenty of long-time, high-performing runners were telling me the same thing, so I thought it might be a good idea to listen.
They talked quite a bit about heart rates and maximum volume of blood flow, etc., (and I'll get into this - from the layperson's perspective - in my future posts), but the crux of their argument was that the only thing pushing hard is bound to do is cause injury. It's certainly no good if you're interested in improving your running performance, nor is it ideal for weight loss.
They recommended another approach entirely. A method that is so easy, it feels like cheating. So addictive, that weight loss becomes secondary. And so effective, that you start seeing results withing just a week or two.
Sound too good to be true? It's not. So stay tuned...
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