I’ve gone well beyond the point of diminishing returns. Early on in this little running plan of mine, I understood that, eventually, running would become difficult. What I haven’t expected, however, is that it’s becoming nothing but. My legs are dead, constantly. I need at least 2 off days to recover, if I want to run completely fresh. Which means, run Monday, and then Thursday. And then Sunday. And so on. In between, my legs are so dead I cannot will myself to exercise. I just want to sleep.
Part of this, of course, is allergies. I’m suffering pollen or dust or something else. Part of it is the new job I just started, which is messing with my sleeping schedule, in addition to keeping me on my feet in lousy shoes all day long. I don’t know if I’m getting better at running, because, as I’m trying to run every other day, still, every run is a brutal struggle. I’ve been doing 3:1 intervals for a while, and I haven’t been having any sort of easier time with them. I’ve moved on to 4:1 intervals now, just to deal with something different. Honestly, I like them a lot better than 3:1. The run seems to go by much faster.
Here’s the playlist for the inaugural 4:1 run:
- Radiohead – Bodysnatchers
- Beatles – Dig It
- Man Man – Hurly/Burly
- White Stripes – Little Room
- Mewithoutyou – Messes of Men
- Liars – Why Midnight Walked But Didn’t Ring Her Bell
- The Roots – I Will Not Apologize
- Tom Waits – Let Me Get Up On It
- Refused – Summerholidays vs Punkroutine
- The Roots – @ 15
- TEXT – Sound is Compressed; Words Rebel and Hiss
- Brian Wilson – Barnyard
- Total Time: 29:30
I honestly didn’t realize the run lasted just under 30 minutes until right now. My playlists are huge–40 or more songs. I just start at a random on the list, and go for a pre-determined amount of songs. A 4:1 ratio means 12 songs should be 30 minutes long, but since the songs are only approximately 4 minutes/1 minute, the total came up a bit shallow. Is anyone is curious, the longest run on there was for “I Will Not Apologize” at 4:34. The shortest break was a tie between “Dig It” and “Little Room” at 50 seconds. I got a bit too winded during the whole thing, so I repeated one of the rest songs, and thus, the actual run was a touch over 30 minutes. All the same, the next time out, I think I’ll add another run song.
The 4th of July is coming up, and we’re heading to Aunt Mary’s house for the weekend. She wants to run with me, which should be properly terrifying, considering her skill level, and my lack thereof. We’ll see how it goes.
