I went for my first decent run in over a decade just three weeks ago, and woke the next morning knowing just one thing. Okay, two. First was that my calves had been replaced with tubes of mince and copper wire.
Second, was that now I was a runner. I lay there, crippled, and pondered this odd new fact. I'd turned 30 three months previous. I was 110kg, smoked like your uncle, thought cardio was what Italians gave each other on Valentine's Day and had just enjoyed my first magical dance with the back-pain fairies. The doctor, a neat, weary-looking man with a neat, weary sounding voice, dashed off another script for antihypertensives and lipid-lowering statins and said this: "You are a relatively healthy young man with no injuries. Your back is hurting because you are out of shape. Start cycling, and build up the muscles supporting your back. Now get the hell out of my sight you bloated, weak-willed repulsive sack of dog vomit."
Okay, that last sentence was added by me - it was under my breath, but I think he heard. And I'll level with you - I'd felt the shame before. The helplessness was familiar. You roll with the punches and ignore the good advice and get back to the business of dying. Delicious, delicious dying.
Who can tell what was different but this time I took the advice - but absently, and kept going because I didn't want to waste the effort. The smokes fell by the wayside - they had to, because it made exercise even more unpleasant. I gave up every lunch break, went to the gym and hit the bike. At first I could do 3km and stopped, half-dead. Then four - mostly dead. Five? Damn near dragged me out of there by my heels. And then we reached six and the body quit its bitching. Dial it up to seven. Yeah, you know it, quads. Added some step machine to the mix. Take that, butt. Rowing machine. Step awaaaay from the rowing machine. Towels. You get the idea.
The weight began dropping and giving up smokes was magical. My diet transformed. Wholemeal bread, nuts, fish, cottage cheese and fruit, fruit, fruit. No-cook salads, chopped into and mixed in the bowl it was eaten out of, curled in front of the lappie mining the Cool Running forums. I discovered a whole new feast of knowledge and gobbled it all. I could diet and be full - hell, even eat when I didn't want to. When did this happen?! Fibre, protein, peptides, B-groups, I read it all and was horrified at my previous diet. My skin cleared up, my mood improved.
But then something ELSE happened on the way to the dance - the final detail, if you will, that condemned me to one day lay in bed with calves cast from magma. It was a fitness boot camp. I'll be right, I thought. I've been destroying that bike. Cop my fitness. Cop it, I say. I lasted fifteen minutes, tops. Then I stopped. Then I spewed. Then I trudged off, in full view of everyone. Apparently people were worried, whispering, is he okay.
Oh, I was okay - I was more than okay, but even I didn't know it yet. I about to become a runner and be all sorts of okay. And return. And right what was wrong and run rings around their crappy little 'bootcamp'.
And win some races! But that's a long ways off and right now, entering the City 2 Surf and running the whole thing is a worthy goal. So let's put our hat in the ring for that one. We've got two-and-a-half months. Should be doable. Should be... um...
Fast-forward to, well, now, and I've now run 5km twice, slowly building up to that spectacular performance with a few 3-4km trots. Total mileage so far is 47km in three and a half weeks, much of it uphill. This is where we are at. So as you can see, we've many delightful injuries to incur and positivly uplifting blisters to seal with gaffa tape before we make our grand, wobbly entrance to the bullishly fit City2Surf field. I'm going to a speedwork session tomorrow morning at 6am - went last Friday and walked away with legs so smashed they just gave up and began again, more or less. These old legs are write-off - time to bolt on some new ones kinda thing. I overpronate with my right foot and overstride generally, and have an exaggerated forefoot srike I need to dial back to more of a natural midfoot pad. I go to the gym every lunchtime and do either 7km on the bike at around 150bpm then 15min on the stepper at around 140bpm, or I just swim flat out for 30min and my HR feels in the 140s for most of it so that's some good cardio too. I also think calisthenics such as pushups and planks will help me run faster with less injury so I do them most nights as well.
Running makes me feel like my feet beat wings and it's all I want to do. But I want to do it right, and I want to do it smart. I wasted 30 years and made a lot of mistakes, but here I am and not a moment too soon. Let's get started.
Quill
DAILY EXERCISE RX 02/06/11:
30min swimming
4 minutes of planks
86.4kg
46bpm
No comments:
Post a Comment