Unwanted two-month break
Oct. 10th, 2013 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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c25kStill can't shake this accursed cold I picked up when travelling in August. After one attempt at running when I triggered the nastiest asthma attack I've had in years, I decided I'd better actually take a break. This has been really really frustrating. The more so since I was just about to hit a full year of successfully running several times a week and my hundredth run.
This week I decided I just have to get going again, because this is getting ridiculous. I do have some kind of respiratory crud for a large proportion of the year, it's just part of the way my lungs are generally a bit rubbish. So in the past I have always said, having a cold is not an excuse, because otherwise I'll be off running more often than I actually manage to run. But the point of this is to make myself healthier, not sicker, so I don't want to be stubborn to the point of being self-destructive.
Tuesday I was really under the weather and was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to manage running. So I walked home from work instead; I took the shorter route, which is 4.7 km instead of 5.3 km, but involves walking up a steep hill at the end. I was trying to push myself to a decent walking pace but even that wasn't really happening, I ended up with 11½'/km, which is really slow by my standards. And I can really feel that I've been essentially off exercise for two months; just a few miles of walking at a semi-brisk pace left my muscles sore and stiff for the next couple of days.
This morning I was still sniffly but somewhat better, so with great psychological effort I dragged myself out for a morning run before work. I decided to just baby my lungs and ran slowly enough that I wasn't really out of breath, and managed to keep going for the full half hour. I am aware that you're really supposed to train by running like that and just gradually build up the comfortable pace, but I'm really reluctant to do so because a "comfortable" running pace for me is about 9½'/km which is just depressingly slow. So in some ways it was good that I was being careful of my lungs. The slowness is a mixture of being out of condition and still not being really well, so I may try a few comfortable pace runs and see if I can manage to improve a little bit without pushing myself too hard.
I did actually find a good rhythm in spite of coming back after a long break. I felt I probably could have kept going at that pace for a good while, but stopped after half an hour because I needed to get to work. The other thing is, having actually completed a run and found it physically pleasant will make it a lot easier psychologically to drag myself out again next time. 3.7 km including the warm-up, not that the warm-up was a whole lot slower than the running / jogging part.
This week I decided I just have to get going again, because this is getting ridiculous. I do have some kind of respiratory crud for a large proportion of the year, it's just part of the way my lungs are generally a bit rubbish. So in the past I have always said, having a cold is not an excuse, because otherwise I'll be off running more often than I actually manage to run. But the point of this is to make myself healthier, not sicker, so I don't want to be stubborn to the point of being self-destructive.
Tuesday I was really under the weather and was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to manage running. So I walked home from work instead; I took the shorter route, which is 4.7 km instead of 5.3 km, but involves walking up a steep hill at the end. I was trying to push myself to a decent walking pace but even that wasn't really happening, I ended up with 11½'/km, which is really slow by my standards. And I can really feel that I've been essentially off exercise for two months; just a few miles of walking at a semi-brisk pace left my muscles sore and stiff for the next couple of days.
This morning I was still sniffly but somewhat better, so with great psychological effort I dragged myself out for a morning run before work. I decided to just baby my lungs and ran slowly enough that I wasn't really out of breath, and managed to keep going for the full half hour. I am aware that you're really supposed to train by running like that and just gradually build up the comfortable pace, but I'm really reluctant to do so because a "comfortable" running pace for me is about 9½'/km which is just depressingly slow. So in some ways it was good that I was being careful of my lungs. The slowness is a mixture of being out of condition and still not being really well, so I may try a few comfortable pace runs and see if I can manage to improve a little bit without pushing myself too hard.
I did actually find a good rhythm in spite of coming back after a long break. I felt I probably could have kept going at that pace for a good while, but stopped after half an hour because I needed to get to work. The other thing is, having actually completed a run and found it physically pleasant will make it a lot easier psychologically to drag myself out again next time. 3.7 km including the warm-up, not that the warm-up was a whole lot slower than the running / jogging part.
