Monday, August 09, 2010

Extended my run to 3.5 miles

My wakeup heart rate this morning was 55 and I had a good 7 hours sleep. I felt pretty good, and I added a quarter mile to my distance, giving me 3.5 miles. The temperature was in the 80s (F) during my run. There were large clouds in the sky that gave a minute or so of shade whenever the sun went behind a cloud. The result of all of this is that today was a pretty good day for running. Because of the lower temperature, I used less water than I've been using. Three cups were sufficient for the 3.5 miles. Last week I used four cups for 3.25 miles.

To give some variety to my running, instead of running south for half the run, I went north/south for 1.5 miles (round trip) and then south/north for 2 miles (round trip). I like the north-bound segment, because it has more trees and rushes along the river bank.

I'm still doing Galloway's alternating of running and walking. I'm doing 46 left-foot-steps of running and 33 left-foot-steps of walking. However, during the last half mile of my run I was getting tired, and I changed to 20-left-foot-steps of running and 20 of walking, and that worked fine.

4 comments:

  1. You're such an inspiration. It really shows that determination and drive play no part on the year displayed on your Driver's License. Thanks for sharing and keep up the good work!

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  2. Do you REALLY spend all your time counting run/walk steps - 46 of one and 33 of the other?
    I tried the walk/run method years ago, after reading about it in Joe Henderson's book 'Better Runs', but afraid it didn't work for me. I emailed Joe to tell him and I think we almost fell out over it. "Come back in 25 years and tell me what you about it" he said! Well I'm 78 now and still just running.
    By the way, it's nice to come across another Septuagenarian runner/blogger. Stick at it!

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  3. Hi Runningfox,

    Yes, I really do count steps. I've been doing it for 6 or 7 years, and it's something that I do without thinking about it.

    The main idea of that method of running is that one takes frequent but short walking breaks. So, I'm not concerned about getting exactly 46/33 steps. I wave and say "Hi" to all of the runners, walkers, cyclists, skaters that I pass, and that interrupts my counting. I just guess at where I would have been in my counting and go from there. I run alone, and if I ran with others and talked with them, I wouldn't be able to count. As you found out, we each have to discover what works for us.

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  4. Runningfox,

    Another way to do run/walk sequences is to estimate distances instead of counting steps. I know about how far I run and how far I walk, and I've be experimenting selecting a landmark (tree, rock, bush, light pole, driveway, etc.) that is about the distance I want to run or walk. This frees me from counting steps but still lets me alternate relative short segments of running and walking.

    As I said before, the objective is to alternate relatively short distances, and the precision in measuring distance doesn't have to be exact.

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