Train in vain

Many of my posts mention the weather. In Britain, talking about the weather is pretty much a given, so we shouldn’t be too surprised with this.

I talk about the weather because it’s the main thing I can’t control when planning what workouts I’ll do in the week. Since setting up my site I’ve written about a scorching summer, a mild autumn, and some strong, bitter winds in the past few weeks.

But there’s many other factors that affect what I do and when. The big one is work. For some reason I’m compelled to go to work all day rather than carve a massive section out of it to run ten miles away. There’s also family, but I can be a bit more flexible with them. As long as I can get up early enough and tiptoe downstairs quietly enough and get out the door without waking anyone then I’m ok!

Even just the drive to do something can be a barrier and while I sing the praises of exercise and the positive impact it has on our wellbeing, sometimes life can be overwhelming. On bad days, just getting out of bed can be hard enough, how can we expect ourselves to jump out of the front door in a brightly coloured top and run around the park smiling at anyone you see. 

A lot has been written about young people unable to find jobs, unable to buy their first house, being told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Things are different now, and the toll of our digital lives on our mental health emerges. The digital world can be a wonderful place, but our 24/7 reliance on screens perhaps isn’t.

I’ve been wondering how we can accept our good days and bad, embrace them as part of our journey through life, and try to step back and see the bigger picture. I’ve written about how I need a goal to get motivated – a half marathon or 10k race with a pb to beat.

At the start of this year, I weighed more than I wanted to and decided, as a new year resolution, I would downsize my body. I weighed myself every day and recorded it in Garmin (I also kept the data in my own spreadsheet because I’m a bit of a nerd), and focussed on my seven day average, rather than the daily numbers. My weight went up and down all the time, but the overall trend was downwards, which boosted my confidence no end.

Can we learn from this? Is there a way to track our trends over time – specifically our fitness, or our progress towards a goal, simply by taking the data we have and using it in a less granular way, a step back to see the bigger picture. 

Does anyone have any thoughts on how we can do this and ensure positivity prevails, even in the face of some miserable days in our path?

Hard core training

Following the success of my Yoga workout last week, I said I’d have a go at a Pilates session on my watch, specifically a workout called Pilates for Runners. So here is… the eagerly anticipated Pilates post!

The Yoga session was long, taking in over 90 different moves over 30 minutes. It was fast paced and difficult in places to keep up with. The Pilates workout was around half as many steps in a similar timeframe delivered at a simpler pace. There was an added bonus of five rests mixed in with the steps. A serious improvement for me, although unfortunately these breaks were only ten seconds long – I could’ve done with a couple of minutes each time!

Pilates appears more fluid than yoga, involving a more complicated range of moves. Complicated to me anyway, a complete novice in the world of organised stretching. As with the Yoga, I copied the man on my watch as he moved through each step. It was not always easy as sometimes you don’t have sight of him, but each step lasted for 45 seconds to a minute, so there was always time to catch up again. 

The 25 minutes or so workout was challenging. It worked the core well and stretched my legs with the help of a resistance band in some steps. Some of the steps hurt, some were fun, (check out “Rolling like a ball” – just called “Rolling” on the app), some I wanted to stop with 30 seconds left to go on it. 

This was all new to me, so there was some uncordinated moves, some groaning, some realisation that my legs just don’t stretch that far. Definitely one to do behind closed curtains! I noticed afterwards that the app details the muscles worked in each step, which will help target different areas in the long run when I get more familiar with what I need to do. 

The best part of these additional workouts is that they are something new and different. I’ve written in the past about the great benefits we get through running on our mental health and well-being. A wonderful part of learning something new is the dopamine hit the body gives us as a reward. And while this wasn’t really learning something new, it was just copying body shapes that a little guy on my watch was making, I did get a sense of reward associated with the exercise. 

The real benefit, I suspect, is the mixture of exercise. A new string to an old bow. A new challenge and a new tendon stretched in a pleasing way. No gain without pain, right? Let’s hope so, there was certainly the pain here.

I’m inspired by the new workout routines and will look for more, perhaps my watch will give me some others to work through. There appears to be workouts for Stand-up paddle boarding, Cross country skiing, even yard work. On send thoughts, I might not want to get too far down that track, I might end up with a list of unwanted jobs, all in the name of fitness.

Going slower to go faster

I went for a run this week. That doesn’t sound too surprising given the majority shareholder subject matter of my site, even given the name of my site, however this run was special as it was marred by a preceding period of systematically undoing my fitness – a holiday, if you will.

It felt odd to pull on the old running shoes again after a break,  but I was keen to understand if I really was back to square one with my running potential. 

I’d set myself a goal of running 5km in 26:40 – the thinking behind this was that to get to my target of 21:40 it would be a straightforward task of knocking a minute off each kilometre. I could achieve this by simply running a bit faster. I wonder if the professional running coaches have picked up on this amazing insight!

The run went well. It was hard in places, but overall it went well, and I went round in my target time with reasonably consistent splits.

The biggest benefit of the run was a reminder of how important it is to do something for positive mental health. After a couple of weeks away from work I’ve felt relaxed and completely de-stressed. This stress has gradually re-emerged this week as I’ve been back in the cut and thrust of my job. Getting a break from it, even to go red-faced and wheezing around the park a few times had a massive benefit on my outlook.

While it’s important (for me at least) to have goals and set targets and to aim at continually improving fitness levels, it’s even more important to take the time out for some self-care, and a step back from a reality that never stops. 

So take that break, let the reality trundle along without you for a while; after all, there’s one thing that us runners are good at – catching up!

Breath on the mile

It’s well documented there are many health benefits running brings, and among those there’s the all important mental health positives. There’s the space to clear your thoughts, think objectively about problems; there’s the buzz you get at the end of completing a run, and the sense of achievement you get when you drive a bit harder, breaking last week’s best. Even seeing other people running past and sharing a knowing nod or half wave is rewarded with a boost to your stride.

Overall, running is like no other activity I do. It’s certainly the most time I get to spend completely alone and in my own thoughts.

If mental benefits are included in running, then why do I find a mental barrier to getting going, going a bit further, or running a bit harder?

If I am struggling during a run, for me it generally comes down to a split of:

• 50% overcoming the challenge mentally 
• 20% oxygen (or lack thereof)
• 20% correct fuelling 
• 10% the actual muscles doing the running

(This is completely unscientific, an oversimplification and guess based on my recent runs.) And yet it’s the muscles I focus on in my training and preparation.

Fuelling is generally ok, I’m fully onboard with carb loading before a race. It’s the Saturday night beer and pizza the night before a long run that usually does me in!

So now I’m focussed on my breathing. My Garmin watch reckons my V02 Max gives me a fitness age of someone twenty years younger than I am. But it’s getting a good lungful in that I struggle with.

Left unchecked, my breathing through exercise is shallow, lung-driven gulps of air. I’m trying to change this by focussing on diaphragmatic breathing, and filling my lungs completely with every breath. However, with the space to clear my head and think objectively about my problems, I always unconsciously default to my former breathing style.

So now I need to break the habit. I’m doing more breathing exercises outside of running, which in itself is relaxing too. But I can’t seem to transfer this consistently to my runs. It may seem drastic, but I’m now considering tattooing my hands and arms with the word “Breathe” over and over again to help remind me when I’m out!