Sunday 14 August 2011

Woohoo - my stamina returns!

People say life's unfair, and I'm inclined to agree....but in some ways, I think it's a good thing! If life was fair, all the stupid and irresponsible stuff I did during my adolescence would surely have caught up with me by now! So in a manner of speaking, I am pretty glad that life is unfair!

However, I do think it entirely unreasonable that despite amato mio's cold only getting a hold on me for two days (proof of how much fitter and healthier I am now), several weeks later, I am still feeling its effect on my chest. Amato mio had it quite badly, which was a worry because he almost never gets sick; however, it went to his chest and he still has a bit of a cough. I developed a very slight cough but nothing much to speak of, and yet it seriously affected my running. My stamina levels dropped significantly, and whereas before I was (just) able to run for 25 minutes without any intervals, for the last couple of weeks, I've had to drop right back to only 10 minutes with two minutes of walking in between.

It sounds pathetic - and it is! My chest has been getting wheezy, I have been very phlegm-y, and I have been getting incredibly out of breath....it's as though I never got to W8 of C25K at all (and having bad hayfever doesn't help)! My dear friend, Chrissy -who runs Badra Tribal - is so much fitter than me, has been incredibly patient, and has been happy to drop back with me, and even though she can run faster and longer, she's gone at my pace too. She's a star! We've been running like this for a couple of weeks now, and I've gradually been feeling fitter. Yesterday, amato mio and I went out (Chrissy had a performance, so couldn't run with us), and finally, I can say that I feel that my stamina and fitness levels are up again!

We've changed from using the C25K App (which is great) to Runkeeper - a free App which allows you to programme in your own runs/intervals/training programmes, and has web-support too. In fact, it actually has more features than Bluefin's C25K. The reason for this change is because the C25K App jumps from intervals of run 10 mins, walk 3, run 10... to run 25mins with no walking. It is do-able (we've done it before) but I have to be honest and say that I don't think I was completely ready for such a large leap before, and I always found it hard-going to run 25 minutes at a time (remember, I've only been running since the end of April, and I am overweight too!). Yesterday I ran 12, walked 2, ran 13 (amato mio did the full 27 minutes non-stop - the first time since his chest cold). Yay! Next week I'll add another two minutes to each run, and the following week, another two minutes. I suspect that the week after, I should be able to reduce the walk to one minute, if not ditch it altogether.

To be honest, I could have carried on running, and not walked for two mins, but the prospect of running up the big hill looming in front of me made me wimp out a bit, and as it turned out, I did run up it but I was glad of the walk break beforehand!

One of the things I love about training like this is that there's no hurry - the most important thing is that I am getting fitter. And each day I go out for a run is a day closer to my dream of running a marathon!

No comments: