After doing the Jillian Michael’s thing on Wednesday, I secretly thought that it wasn’t as tough as I had expected. Sure, I had to do the push-ups the girls way and I wasn’t lunging at the speed of JM and her models, but I got through it and felt ok.
Yesterday when I got up in the morning, my legs were a bit stiff as was expected but that’s all. I didn’t realise how sore I really was until I got off the couch at lunchtime and attempted to get dressed. It took me 7 minutes to put my bra on.
It wasn’t a great day all round yesterday. My SmartCoach had me down for a 8 km run that included a warm-up and a cool-down but the 5 km in the middle needed to be at a pace of 6:35. I thought that would be fairly manageable for me and so it would have been if I knew the difference between pace and speed. (Pace = minutes per km, speed = km per hour.)
I have my RunKeeper app telling me my current pace every 2 minutes. During the warm-up, my pace is about 6:10 and because I’m a dummy, I thought I should speed up for the middle 5 km. I do. My pace goes down to 5:45. I thought that the app must not be very accurate because I was definitely going faster. I start running faster still until the next pace check where I’m at 4:55 and about to die. I thought I could never sustain this pace for another 3+ km so I had to slow down.
Then of course I notice that the pace check goes up and it dawns on me that pace and speed are two entirely different things and I’ve been going too fast the entire run. I end up finishing the run with an average pace of 6:10 for the whole 8 kms which was much faster than I was supposed to run.
Last night I went to the Tokyo International Film Festival. There are a lot of stairs in the Tokyo underground. I took them like I was 80 years old with two fake hips and one leg shorter than the other.
Today SmartCoach has me down for a 3km run at an easy pace. I think I’m also going to give JM another go today too, if for no other reason than to try and shift the lactic acid build up in my thighs and shoulders. But right now, I’m sticking to the couch.
The Making of Merilyn 
Ok, this is wear our American-Aussie differences come in. I still think in miles per hour. So I’m having a hard time thinking minutes per kilometer. But using http://www.runnersworld.com/tools/pace-converter it seems that anything less that 6:13 is doing pretty good for this point in your training. A marathoner friend told me once that you should focus on either distance or speed at one time, but not both. Personally, I think it’s best for you to think about distance at this stage of the game. Then, come December/January, you can start thinking about speed. Not that I want to question your SmartCoach, but I’d take his (her?) demands with a grain of salt. I think you’re doing awesome! By the way, I love the map of your run… I really gotta get the inspiration to get up and go for a run in the morning… and use this app to map it out and record the time, pace, calories burned. Great info to have!
I totally recommend RunKeeper. You’ll love it! And it plays you music while you run too.
My smart coach has me doing 4 runs a week. 2 are recovery runs which are short and easy pace. One is for speed and one is for distance so I think all bases are covered!
Tomorrow though, I’m just resting!
Hi Mel, I’m not reading anything here that makes me want to leave the comfort of my couch to run a marathon but I’m enjoying your journey and think your motivation is impressive. Good luck.
Hi Nic! I don’t really want to run a half marathon either but I need some kind of goal to work towards so I can shift this extra weight! I’m tired of being fat again! Hopefully I can stay motivated because if not, everyone will know I’ve given up.
The first big hurdle will be trying to keep training at Christmas. You could run with me!
I can’t run. I could cycle along side you though and shout out words of encouragement like ‘Watch out for the huge dog turd’ and ‘don’t look to your right as there is a delicious French bakery there’.
Great! That will help with improving my pace so that I can manage the odd French pastry!