Tuesday, March 16, 2010

A Plug for Pacing Yourself


Yesterday I accomplished 30 minutes on the treadmill.  My right knee has been sensitive for quite some time, and I've been trying to slowly recover its capacity to I can get back out on the trail.  I didn't run for two whole weeks with the hope that resting my knee would be the answer.  It's helped a lot, but I'm still not really back to full performance yet.  Sunday I went out on a run for the first time in a while, but only gave myself 1 mile.  It felt ok, but I'm nervous about pushing it.

Yesterday I hopped on the treadmill at lunch and set the timer for 10 minutes.  I figured I could probably run longer on the treadmill, but I had run the day before and I didn't want to get overzealous and undo all the cautious care I'd already put into rehabbing my sorry right knee.  I figured if I could do 10 min, that would be good.  Well, I did.  And it was.  I felt great, in fact.  So I gave myself another 10 minutes, but I was going to walk the first 5 minutes at 4.0 mph and then run the last 5 at 6.0 mph.  I still felt good so I extended my second running interval to 10 minutes, and then repeated a 5 minute walk followed by a 10 minute run, followed by a 5 min cool-down.

By really paying attention to my body, I found I was actually able to run longer than I thought without any knee sensitivity.  I took today off running and focused on weight-lifting followed by a brisk walk at an incline for 10 minutes.

Yesterday:
Total Calories: 1471
Net Calories: 1084 (156 under)
H2O Intake: 32 oz
Total Exercise: 65 min
Cardio: 35 min

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