I’m not sure what’s come over me.
A week ago, I was doing one yoga session a week and barely getting out of the house.
Today will now be my eighth day of an activity streak! Here’s what it’s looked like:
Friday: Gym – treadmill, bike and cross-trainer for a total of about 40 minutes
Saturday: Gym – treadmill, bike and cross-trainer for a total of about 45 minutes
Sunday: Yoga video at home (about an hour)
Monday: Yoga class (an hour)
Tuesday: Gym – cross-trainer and treadmill for a total of about 40 minutes
Wednesday: Yoga video at home (about an hour)
Thursday: Gym – all treadmill, 40 minutes in total but with much more running
Today: Planning on another hour long yoga video.
I’ve also got gym/yoga plans going up to Monday – this ish is bananas.
I’m really surprised with how well my lungs are coping with starting to run again. I thought I’d be coughing and spluttering all over the show, but it’s more my stamina in general that’s the problem. It’ll come back though. I’m trying to do different kinds of runs to get me back up to speeds and distances I used to be capable of. I started off with trying to start at 8 km/h and running for a minute before adding 0.1 km/h until I got to 9 km/h or thereabouts and then coming back down, but couldn’t manage it and ended up doing some really haphazard speeds, running fast and walking slow whenever I felt I needed it.
I then figured that the problem with that was also partially mental: I was trying to run faster every minute and didn’t think I could do it. So yesterday I tried running two minutes at 9, then took off 0.1 every two minutes – same thing overall, just in a more mind-friendly order. It worked! Yeah, I had to walk for between 1 and 3 minutes every now and again because I had stitch (and am pretty unfit at the moment), but I did every rep I set out to do. I even got the Runner’s High at the end and wanted to keep going!
So I think I’ll be sticking with a routine like that for a bit, switching it up when I’m starting to master it. Probably the best part is that in that 40 minutes (which also included a 5 minute warm up walk and a 5 minute cool down walk), I got to nearly 5K, so I’m pretty hopeful that I can put in a respectable time for the Virtual Run coming up next month.
Any bets on how long I can keep this streak going?
Leah Hunt 