There’s a lot to know about running. Sure, in the end, you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, but if you want to keep that up for 3 or 5 or 10 or 26.2 or 100 miles, you need to learn a few things. Before I began running for the Broad Street Run, I knew nothing about running. As previously posted, I had to be told to go buy shoes. Now, I don’t intend to place in the run, or anything. I’m not trying to become an “elite” runner. I have a stated goal of 10 miles in 75 minutes, but I’ll happily adjust that goal for reality as we get closer to the actual race. If I can’t possibly finish in 75 minutes, I’ll shoot for 85 or 90 or whatever. If I practice run 10 miles in January in 75 minutes, maybe I’ll shoot for 70 or 65 or something.
Right now, I suspect that, through a combination of walking and running, I’d make it about 10 miles in 120 screaming minutes. (Maybe I’ll try that–a Broad St test run). Pretending that, by foot, in some form, I can move 10 miles in 120 minutes, getting down to 75 means knocking 3/8ths of my time off (or, for you percentages lovers, 37.5%). That’s no small task, and, I suspect, just putting one putting one foot in front of the other isn’t going to cut the mustard.
So, we’ll study running over the next year as well as, ya know, actually doing it. We’ll find some blogs, read some magazines (and maybe some books… maybe), and maybe we’ll harass some doctor into giving us some information on what training and stuff like that do to a body.
We’ll start on the informative posts next time (don’t want to shortchange any interesting sources by lumping them into this post). For now, a quick synopsis of today’s run:
Today’s run lasted about 38 minutes. Maybe when the first paycheck from the new job comes in, I’ll get a digital watch that’ll countdown intervals and stuff so I can get a more precise time, but for now, I’m more than happy to rough it, timewise. I figure I’m not off by more than a minute or so, and, for now, as long as I’m over the 30 minute mark, I’m happy.
I traveled throughout Fishtown, traveling 3.33 miles. Like from Thursday, the weather was cool, and it was raining out, though not nearly as hard as last time. Something that’s given me a good deal of pleasure so far is how with each outing (all three of them so far), I’ve gotten noticeably better in my pace and in my distance. I’m especially pleased by this because I’m not actually trying to run faster or farther. I’m just trying to go out and run. And, somehow, it’s getting easier. My first run I paced 12:16 per mile. On Thursday I ran at a 11:40 rate, and today I ran an 11:25 rate. My distances went from 2.44 miles to 2.57 and today I finished after 3.33 miles, though that was in 38 minutes. While the pace might have been improved only slightly in today’s run, my endurance had improved as I had little issuing continuing on for 8 minutes more than planned.
I’m hoping to get up to a point where I’m running 4 miles per outing. I think I can do this within a couple of weeks. Obviously, I’ll be continuing to run/walk, albeit over a greater distance, adding the time necessary to cover the distance as my body allows me.
I’ve started clocking the kind of distance I cover biking. It’s a little over 3 miles (I think about 3 1/4 miles) each way to work. And though I’m biking the distance, and biking is way easier than running, I’m clocking it just because it is exercise, and I can’t imagine it’s not contributing to my training. Over the past 4 days I’ve covered about 30 miles on 2 feet and 2 wheels. About 2/3rds of that has been on bicycle, but while the biking is pretty constant (6-7 miles per day for commute to/from work), I anticipate the running portion will gradually grow. Looking forward to it.
