Pacing Myself

Pacing Myself 

Saturday, September 03, 2011 

I've always had trouble pacing myself. That's one of the reasons I've never been a runner; I've never been patient enough to train slowly. 

Thursday I turned in a pretty good walk/run time in training. Friday I lifted weights and got out for a walk late to keep some streaks going. And on to Saturday. 

The plan was to get up early, do a walk/run of 5.2 miles before meeting my daughter at McDonald's for breakfast, then do normal weekend stuff. What happened is I ended up slacking off a lot. 

First, the walk/run. This was not a training exercise. The idea was to walk longer than I would in training, and not push hard on the runs. Well, the humidity this morning was every bit as bad as yesterday. The good news is I got out when the temperature was still reasonable; but I was doing terrible with the running. First stretch, I felt like slowing to a walk at one and a half minutes. After that, I managed 5 two minute runs, with 2 to 5 minutes walking between. The next time I set out to run, I managed a half minute. 

My socks were wet. I'll try buying new socks, feels like the wicking action in these socks isn't what it was. My calves hurt. Either I really worked too hard Thursday, or the walking lunges yesterday were too much. I could feel a soreness in my thighs; when I got home I looked it up and I guess I worked by hip adductors pretty hard on Thursday. I don't think the RDLs and walking lunges yesterday would do that. 

The technical term that weight lifters use for how I felt is "pretty beat up." This is obvious from the time I start the walk/run, but by the time I'm ready to admit it I'm more than halfway through the course, having run a total of 12 minutes. That's kind of deflating after training with walk 1, run 2 and running 20 total minutes. Couldn't manage 20 minutes in 2 minute segments, even with more time walking between runs. Sad. 

Managed the 5.2 miles in 64 minutes. Got a little bit of a late start, so I skipped the hamstring and quad stretches, but made sure to to a good job on the calf stretches. Made it to breakfast on time, to hear daughter talk about moving to a solo apartment the first of October. There's drama with her landlady/roommate, who seems headed for Learning Experience in Life. 

After breakfast, it was hot and humid. Normal weekend chores got started late, and some didn't get done. What did get done was a nap; grocery shopping; a bit of playing around on the SP site; and watching some football. I made no attempt to deal with the lawn in the heat. Tomorrow is supposed to be just as bad. I'll see how my body feels before I try to deal with the lawn then. 

This is kind of a wakeup call. I've been diligent about getting exercise, but not as diligent as I should have been about controlling how much exercise. This has given me problems in the past, when my fitness program imploded but I kept eating like it was still going on. I'll try to deal with it better this time. 

First step is tomorrow. Maybe I'll start Week 1 of the 5K My Way running program, and maybe I'll just walk for exercise. I need to listen to my body and see whether I've got enough rest time in to charge back into training. If not tomorrow, almost certainly Monday for the training. Tomorrow is supposed to be hot again, but Monday should be cooler at the cost of having some showers. I can deal with showers when out to walk or run. 

It's a hard lesson, but I need to learn to pace myself. Not only in a single day's run, but also in overall exercise and fitness. I really don't want the program to implode and see the results I've already achieved evaporate. If I have to see slower progress, fine. But let's not lose what I've already got. To hold on, I need to keep working the program, but not work it so hard that it implodes. 

Pace yourself, kid. You're worth it.