Monday, January 25, 2010

It's good to push hard


I think the biggest revelation of this year is that I just need to push through the pain to get results. I know, it sounds kind of obvious, but it wasn't to me.
There are zillion training methods and theories out there. The people I tend to read all base their trainings on heart rate zones, repetitions, hard workouts and rest days.
Most of their hard workouts are harder and more ambitious in development over a training period for let's says a half marathon then I'd ever try to achieve on my own.
The the opposite side: their easy workouts are much easier then my easier workouts. At least as far as HR goes.

Side note:
I have to note it here that I just not a regular guy in terms of HR definition. 220-age never worked for me. I could easily push over the 100% limit determined this way any time. I had to learn from experience (since the monitored treadmill was giving the same, low max HR results) what my actual max could be around.


So end of last year, in order to keep my body happy (so I thought) I watched my HR very closely. It just wouldn't go down. I was running very-very (and I _mean_ very) slow and yet: I still bit into the 80% zone whatever I tried. This resulted in my running slowing down so much that I hated every minute of it.

Than this January I just started that machine and ran. While trying not to overdo it I pushed as hard as I could. Both pace and HR. By the end of the first week I was happy again with my running. By the end of the second week I ran the longest distance in a long time with reserves in my body and way under the time I set as "it would be nice to beat that".

To avoid over-training I took last week "off", only running 3 times and low mileage. This week it's back to business once again, and I'll see where the revelation leads to...

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Long time no see

It's been a while. 2009 was the first complete year as far as running is concerned. I did not quit. Had some breaks but returned over and over again.

Yet it was a strange end to the year. I managed to log in the final few kilometers at the same pace as I started the year with. Just could not get my head around the reasons. More, I simply could not get my muscles to move any faster without pushing my heartrate through the roof.

Luckily, 2010 started and it all came around. If all goes well I'll log top mileage this month with two longer runs in the books.

My first target: april 25th, half marathon.