Highly Strung

After one day of rest, during which my muscles were reminding me why I don’t usually run, I hauled myself out of bed at 6.45, did a few stretches and headed back down to Oriental Bay.  I’m still, as ever, an awkward runner, my posture isn’t great and I’m not sure where to position my arms.  Watching other runners – they seem to have a very comfortable way of running, however they do all have different styles.  Some run with arms hung loose, hands waving about. Some run with clenched fists, arms bent at a right angle.  Some run with arms bent but raised slightly higher and pulled into the body.  I haven’t find a style that’s comfortable yet, my arms feel stiff, my hands, lightly clenched, feel wrong.  My speed is off too, as ever I’m trying to quash the urge to run as fast as I am able and instead jog lightly.  It’s hard as my natural inclination is to do everything as fast I can then have a sit down, but I know that on a longer run that isn’t sustainable. So I’ve been trying to concentrate on a more plodding speed rather than roadrunner speed.

My next run will be Saturday or Sunday morning.  I’m not looking forward to it as I know there will be more people about and I’m still self conscious about my chaotic style.  As an antidote to the self consciousness I will no doubt feel, I plan to take a long cycle in the weekend – riding a bike feels as natural to me as breathing.

With the beginning of a new year and the inspiration of several running friends I’ve decided to start running regularly.  I’m attracted to running for the simple reason that it’s exercise that requires little kit/maintenance of kit and is largely not weather reliant.

In the past I’ve embarked on runs with seasoned runners and made the mistake of keeping up with them despite my complete lack of experience.  For example the last run I went on I ran for 35 minutes as fast as I could – achieving 4.5 km without stopping.  Whilst this is pretty good in terms of timing and distance, the down side struck me the day after and the day after that as I found myself severely disabled.  Every muscle in my body hurt – it quite seriously took me a week to recover.  That was about 5 years ago, I think I may have learnt my lesson that time.

This time I’ve consulted the internet and found what sounds like a sensible schedule that allows me to build up to 30 minutes of running:

Week 1   Run one min, walk 90 seconds. Repeat eight times. Do three times a week.
Week 2   Run two mins, walk one min. Repeat seven times. Do three times a week.
Week 3   Run three mins walk one mins. Repeat six times. Do three times a week.
Week 4   Run five mins, walk two mins. Repeat four times. Do three times a week.
Week 5   Run eight mins, walk two mins. Repeat three times. Do three times a week.
Week 6   Run 12 mins, walk one min. Repeat three times. Do three times a week.
Week 7   Run 15 mins, walk one min, Run fifteen mins. Do three times a week
Week 8   Run 30 mins continuously.
(Source:  Runners World)

I started this morning. I felt like quite a fraud headed down to Oriental bay at 6.50am this morning dressed in my pristine proper runners gear. Thankfully once I was on the path along the bay I realised that there are many different types of runners and probably no one cares what I’m doing or not doing out there.

Instead of using a stopwatch timer which seemed too difficult, I organised my iTunes by song length then chose songs of appropriate length so that I could just switch to walking on every second track.  It wasn’t easy getting songs of 1 minute long – I look forward to choosing songs of 2 minutes length for next week’s run portion..a slightly easier task.

So wish me luck – I’m hoping to report back on progress at the end of the week (this assumes that I will stick to the schedule this week).