February Runs

[indysteel]

Anelia, if I remember correctly from a past thread, you don't run all that often. You sure kick butt when you do! It's like pulling teeth for me to increase my average distance beyond the 10k mark.

Skhill, I feel your pain. This past week sucked in Indiana, too. I'm ready for spring.

[Anelia]

That's right, Indysteel, I run once a week. First my challenge was to beat 10 miles because my military students said that women CAN'T run. I said "watch me!"and I ran it with motivation to beat this misconseption. After having run 15 km, there are 3 or 4 to get home without calling my husband to pick me up. So I did this as my furthest distance. After running almost 20 k, it's not something difficult to run half of it.
At the beginning my HR was very high even with a light jog but now I can sustain even 130 and keep running. What I lack is speed and I have to work on shorter but more intensive runs but today was not the day: I felt heavy and slow...

[Artista]

Are you implying that it's not normal to feel heavy and slow while running In all seriousness, I always feel that way for the first 20 minutes. After a 20 minute warm up, I feel like I have wings on my heels. I'm hoping that it will take me less time to warm up as my body adjusts to running regularly.

[Anelia]

Thanks for comforting me, Artista It's not only me, then. What is more, when I go out, I have to climb a 3 km hill with ascend about 200 m so that I am in the forest nd strart running the flat part. Maybe it's not a good idea to start with a climb before warming up but this is the terrain we have...

[indysteel]

Wow; you have students who believe women can't run? I know women continue to face barriers in sport because of people's unfounded perceptions, but I thought we had at least established a heck of a long time ago that we can run for pete's sake. That's really sad.

In any event, I find it darn impressive that you can do 10-mile run with your training consisting of only one run a week. Good for you.

Artista, my legs don't feel heavy immediately into a run, but I hit a bit of a wall at the 2-3-mile mark. Once I'm past that, I feel better; it's just a question of going past three miles. If memory serves, people have indicated in past running threads on TE that they don't feel really warmed up until they've done 3-5 miles--depending on the person. These are people who have been running a long time, so I'm not sure it necessarily gets better with time. You just get better at running through it, which is what I'm finding. I used to just give up by the time I hit three miles. Now I have at least enough stamina--although, again, it's been like pulling teeth--to get to the 5-6 mark. I know it'll keep getting better, but I'm in awe of anybody who can run an hour or more on a regular basis. It's hard work.

[Artista]

Anelia, my terrain sounds similar to yours, although I'm not sure that mine is quite as steep at the beginning. My hill consists of long gradual climbs sprinkled with short steep climbs until I get to the top. Since my doctor suggested "easing" back into running after having ankle hardware removed, I'm indulging myself by walking the first 5 minutes, then walking all of the steep stuff as well as small sections of the gradual hills until I get to the top. I should be able to go all out by the end of February but I'm sure that I'll still have to do a lot of run/walk on my uphill warm up.

Indy, now that you mention it, I do remember seeing posts by conditioned runners about not feeling warmed up for the first 3-5 miles. I'm running on single track trails with varying amounts of hills and rocky sections that slow me down. I tend to track my runs by time rather than distance since I can't maintain an even speed. So maybe taking 20 minutes to feel warmed up isn't as out of the ordinary as I thought it was.

[Crankin]

This why I have a love/hate relationship with running. I never get past the heavy feeling, because I am running 3 miles, with hills. Even the few times i ran 4, at first I felt heavy, then OK for like 2 minutes, then tired or something would be annoying me with pain. I don't have too much pain from anything now, but given that I need at least 30 minutes to feel decent on the bike, I know I'm a slow to warm up type. And that's been since the beginning, not just in my "advanced" age.
It annoys me that running seems so easy for some people.

[Artista]

But Crankin, think of how many people may be "annoyed" that YOU can ride and run as "easily" as you do. Perceptions are relative