Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Commodore is da man

I want to give a shout-out to Commodore for his fabulous No Limits challenge to us all. I decided it was just what I needed to jumpstart my glacial progress and got on board.

With that in mind, I went into today's cardio session with a completely different plan. That is, none at all. I usually start a run workout with a plan from a running book of how many intervals for how many minutes... very regimented. While this has been good for my progress overall, lately I finish my intervals feeling like I could have run just a little more. After reading Commodore's post I realized I've been placing artificial limits on my running.

Today I decided screw the intervals, let's just see how long I can keep it up. I have a tendency to let my mind defeat me when the minutes start adding up because contrary to the mounting evidence, deep down I guess I still believe I can't run, so I had to try something completely different. I started running at my easy warm-up speed (4.7 mph, or about a 12:45 pace). Then to trick myself, after every 1 minute I bumped up the speed .1 mph. Sounds dumb, but it worked like a charm. It was easy to run for each minute, and my brain forgot to add them all up.

The end results was this: I ran the longest I've ever run non-stop in my life - 7 whole minutes. Ended up being about .65 miles - also the farthest distance I've ever run.

Might not sound like much, but it was a major mental and physical breakthrough for me and I can't wait to try it again tomorrow.

1 comment:

Sixteen Chickens said...

No way! No way! The Kahuna already made me give up candy for New Years, and now Com wants me to do sittups and crunchs and stretches, what's next? Brocolli for breakfast? No way I am so not in! I'm not, I swear, I'm not, well ok, maybe, if you talk me in to it. Wait a sec, I think I can touch my toes while sitting at the 'puter. Arrrrghhh stop with the !@#$#&%$#@@$ challenges already! ;)