The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

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So to get ready for my race on the 21th, I decided to put in a long distance run last night. Got home from work, laced up my shoes, grabbed the ipod, and out the door I went.

And about killed myself.

I ended up sweating out 2 pounds and decided to walk the quarter of the mile back to the house. All because I had forgotten a cardinal rule for running : Only increase your distance about 10% each week. While my record on here shows a progression of 2.5 miles and 3.4 miles, but I’ve been running the 5k distance, or 3.11 miles, before my karate classes. That gives me about 9 and half I’ve been running weekly for the past few weeks. By running 4.25, I need to keep right at 3 miles for my other 2 days this week.

The reason for this rule is to prevent a hard shock on the body. By increasing your distance by more 10%, a runner doesn’t usually get enough to time to properly recover. Heck by increasing your distance or exercising to hard you can actually end up losing whatever benefit you were attempting to gain. If your exercise drains you so much you can’t do your normal activities later, you’ve reduced the overall amount of calories you could have burnt for that day.

So for myself, I’ve got to re-learn old skills and not be an idiot. For our readers, push yourself to sensible limits. By flirting with those boundaries you are able to expand to do and accomplish. Waddle on.

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