As I think I've mentioned before, I've decided to get back into some form of regular physical training after a short break of a decade or 2. There's a great T shirt slogan that goes something along the lines of "The older I get, the better I was". Which sums me up pretty well. I foolishly thought that I could just pick up where I left off as a spotty faced youngster, and that it would all just come flooding back. Big mistake, obviously. Even if it has taken me a while to finally admit it. So it's time to strip everything back and start again.
Things have changed a bit in the past 20 years. Fortunately there are now new and improved ways for me to feel like death would be a welcomed alternative. One thing that we did recently, was to purchase a GPS training watch. Something I would have scoffed at a few years back. Now I'm wondering how I ever managed without it. For anyone out there who doesn't know what these things are, and gives a damn, it's basically a wrist stopwatch that also records and displays your distance and speed if you're out walking, jogging or cycling. As I'm starting out again, I find it a great teaching aid to help me see if I'm running too fast or too slow. I'm usually out training by myself, which I quite enjoy really. It's time when I can contemplate life or even, God forbid, do a little bit of Swedish language training in my head. Counting to 100 in Swedish can help distract one from the agony of crawling up a hill. But then I'm an easily distracted person. Anyway, one feature with the watch is that you can play back a previous training session and effectively race against yourself. You need never be lonely again. I've decided to be kind to my future self if I decide to do a training session that I intend to save, and slow down a bit in the middle as a present to my future self. Yeah, I know I'm only cheating myself, but that's why cheating was invented. An added bonus with the model we purchased is the inclusion of a heart rate monitor. Which is an improvement over the stabbing chest pain and numb left arm technique I had previously been relying on. Overall, I'm really impressed with the product. We'll see how long it is before it ends up in the cupboard with the karate suit, electric guitar, and roller skates.
The second part of my extreme overhaul has been to look at the way I train. As a teenager I could just strap on a pair of trainers and just go for it. And it worked pretty well. Now, as a non-teenager, it's not quite so footloose and fancyfree. I'm getting aches and pains where I never knew one could. Creams, gels, plasters and powders are now part of my daily ritual. Sad but true. A couple of problems had been hanging around for a while and I was getting prety sick of them. Here again I decided to take advantage of the latest in technology, the Internet. I'm a bit wary of looking for medical type advice on the internet. For every person that tells you that red meat is the only way to go, there's 2 who will say that you'll most likely turn into an axe weilding maniac if you even smell red meat. So I try to treat them with a bit of caution. However, I did find enough people talking about the same issues and reaching the same conclusion, for me to at least try and give it a go.
Most of the pain niggles I've been experiencing seem to be related to the length of stride that I've been taking. According to on-line "experts". Buggered if I know anything about that, I just do what comes naturally. Which it seems has been bad for me. So I'm now trying to retrain my natural tendancies by shortening my stride. Don't know if you don't try. That was proving to be nearly impossible until I read that the solution is to increase the frequency that our feet hit the ground. If you do that, and keep the same speed (this is where the GPS clock is paying for itself), then your stride length will reduce by default. And bugger me if it didn't work. I felt better straight away, with pain completely gone from the problem areas. As as extra bonus, it seems that moving my legs faster is actually less effort than moving them slower but further. Thanks to the new trusty toy, my heart rate is about 10 beats per minute slower than it was when running at the same speed previously. Not something that I was expecting.
It's early days yet, and still very much a work in progress. But the results are enough to give me some encouragement. The big test will be how motivated I am when the snow comes. Plodding along beside the anorexic ADHD gym bunnies is not my idea of fun.
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