Posts tagged as:

recovery

Interval Awareness

by Natalie on July 27, 2009

Intervals involve hard runs for short times or distances followed by recovery jogs so it's helpful to have a watch to time each interval. Photo by Michael Lokner.

Intervals involve hard runs for short times or distances followed by recovery jogs so it's helpful to have a watch to time each interval. Photo by Michael Lokner.

Until recently, the last time I ran intervals was during track and field practice in high school. I’ve read plenty of articles about interval runs and there are some great folks on Twitter to learn from whose focus is interval training. The last few weeks of my triathlon training plan have included threshold interval work-outs. According to the plan this means to run for three minutes at 5K pace followed by a three minute jog. The first session I repeated this three times and the next three sessions I was to repeat four times. Each interval session begins and ends with a little over a one mile jog which happens to be the distance from my house to the local track, quiet convenient!

The first round of intervals were eye-opening. Even though I’d been preparing my body for speed with strides and tempo runs, attempting to maintain what I thought to be my 5K pace for three minutes was much more challenging than I thought it would be. I’m sure that part of the problem is that I still don’t know my actual 5K pace. My goal pace is 8-minute miles but I have not measured that on the track. I measure my 5K pace by my form, the length of my stride, the little extra push from my arms, and my breathing. I’m so familiar with my 9-minute pace that I feel like I can tell when I’ve pushed past that to something faster and that is what I consider my 5K pace. [click to continue…]

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Running Off Days

by Natalie on July 1, 2009

42-15530314We all know that rest days are important for any kind of training to be successful and learning to appreciate rest days, I’ve found, requires just as much practice as training itself. This winter when I was marathon training I would often experience various levels of guilt on my off days and I know I am not alone. Despite the anxiety I sometimes felt by not running, I knew it was important that my body get a break from the impact and stresses of running.

I’ve read many articles and heard from a number of coaches and other runners that rest days do not have to be days of complete inactivity. When it comes to running, rest days are anything from a light run to a cross-training activity to weight training to Pilates. I fully admit to having been very inconsistent in how I used to spend my rest days and more often than not would choose to do nothing rather than cross-train. All that changed when I started triathlon training. [click to continue…]

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Putting Sprints Into Perspective

May 1, 2009

I have been trying to go to spin class at my gym at least once a week, twice if my body can handle the early morning wake-up; class starts at 5:30 a.m. By now I have had every instructor and they each have their own teaching style, routines, and way of motivating me to push [...]

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Post-Race Recovery

March 5, 2009

For many years, the longest run I ever trained for was a 10K. I usually ran consistently, but would really ramp up a training program about 2-3 months prior to the 10K. Inevitably after the 10K I was always likely to fall off the running bandwagon, sometimes for a week or two, sometimes for a [...]

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First Time Reflections

March 2, 2009

This morning as I was walking down the stairs sideways, slowly, holding on to the railing, and feeling each step in my knees and ankles I smiled knowing that for all this pain I would not change having just run my first marathon less than 24 hours ago. There are still so many thoughts and [...]

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