...now with half the ankle pain!
I started the C25k again yesterday, on the treadmill. I put it on a 0.5% incline, and alternated between 3.5 mph walking and 4.0 mph jogging for 25 minutes after a 5-minute warmup. It wasn't too bad. My right knee complained a bit (it's bruised from the UAR this weekend, and prone to injury besides), and my left Achilles was surprisingly pain-free. It'll take a couple more workouts to know how healed it really is, because the pain didn't really come on until the 2nd week last time.
I was going to wait till next month to start this back up, but I was so dismayed by my run performance at the race this past weekend that I decided to start early. The run from the start line to the bike area was maybe 1/4 of a mile (downhill!), and I had to walk part of it in order to have any energy left to get on my bike. Suck! I may be heavier than I want to be, but I like to think that I'm still in fairly decent shape. Not being able to run from here to there without collapsing from heat exhaustion (hat tip)? Humiliating. Especially since my 17-year-old teammate was all composed and rested by the time I even got to the bikes, so I got to feel old as well as unfit. :)
So anyway, running on the treadmill for now. I'm not ordinarily a treadmill fan, but the heat is too much for me in the summertime, especially when just starting out. I'm looking into a membership at a gym with an indoor track, since it's a more forgiving surface & temperature than my outdoor options. The only thing stopping me is cost--the one I've been looking into would cost about $150 to start, and then $35/month. Since they don't have spin classes or extended hours, though, I'd have to keep my 24Hour membership as well. Considering that I only hit the gym once or twice a week, it hardly seems worth $80/month. The indoor-track gym does have 3-month and 6-month membership options, though, so I'm considering signing up just for the summer. We'll see...if the treadmill proves to be tolerable over the next couple weeks and I don't hurt myself again, I may just stick with it until the weather cools off. Whatever I decide to do, I need to stick with the running from now till October, or I'll never be ready for the duathlon.
Here are the HRM/treadmill stats from this first workout:
Time: 35:25
Distance: 2.01 mi
Walk speed: 3.5 mph
Run speed: 4.0 mph
HRMax: 174 bpm
HR avg: 147 bpm
~13 minutes in 60-70% HR zone, 12 minutes in 70-80%, 11 minutes in 80-90.
The HRs are a little higher than I would have liked, but I know those will come down over time. Right now, I'm more concerned with staying injury-free than staying aerobic.
I'm hitting the treadmill again today at lunch, and this will really start the true test of my ankle...will it hold up to two running workouts in one week?
Song o' the Day: Run Runaway - Slade (right-click, save-as, per usual...I'm trying a new thing here, attaching a song to each post rather than posting a handful on Fridays. What do you think? UPDATE: link removed.)
Posted by Joy at June 27, 2007 07:01 PM