So now that my half marathon is done, I am sure you are all wondering what I am doing now (and by ‘all’ I mean my mom and dad, haha, you know, my only readers J) when it comes to my running and ‘training’. I am so sorry that I have left you in suspense this long J.
I met up with my coach the week after my race to discuss what I wanted to do. I want to stay in the same physical shape that I am in right now, but I don’t think I want to technically have a half marathon be ‘my distance’. I mean, I really enjoyed it and I think I would do another one (I am currently trying to talk Ryan into running one with me), but I think I would rather be in great 5K or 10K shape and then know that if I wanted to do another half marathon that I COULD.
With that being said, my coach also suggests that I change my form. Right now I am a heel-mid-foot striker, meaning that when I land, I am landing on my heel to mid-foot. This is an issue because there is nothing really to absorb the shock of my impact, so it goes up to my knees (and probably a big reason why my IT band was flaring up). He said that I could probably run the rest of my life with the form I am currently running with, but believes I would continue to get injuries and tear up my body - thus shortening the length of my running ‘life’.
My coach is actually on vacation for the next month, so before he left we made sure to meet up and make a game plan for that month. He suggested that I take that month off of running. Now, of course I am still working out, but he said that it would be like practicing bad habits and thought it would be easier if he could train me on changing my form once he got back. He said that it is sort of like golf. He would rather I not have picked up a club than to have played with a bad swing for 12 years and then have to correct it. So when he gets back we are going to work on changing my form so that I can run on my toes. He had mentioned this when he first started giving me suggestions, but because my race was too close (he thought it would take me about 6-9 months to truly change my form), we decided I would prefer to just train for my race and then change my form once I was done that that race. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to get frustrated with changing my form that I give up on running. I would rather wrong ‘incorrectly’ and possibly just have to scale back my mileage in the future (say 10 years from now), than give it up all together – because, I know this is crazy, but I LIKE RUNNING!!
I am going to be doing 3 days of cardio and 2 gym days. Below is a brief overview of what I will be doing for the next month to maintain the fitness level that I am currently in.
Mondays – Bike to work, ride for an hour after work, bike home from work
Tuesday – Gym day: abs, back and legs
Wednesday – Elliptical for an hour (alternating up my routines – 1 week short intervals, 1 week long intervals, 1 week straight running, etc)
Thursday – DAY OFF (I am working this in because A. I am not training for a half marathon any longer so don’t really need 6 days of working out a week and B. Our Small Group is on Thursdays and I don’t want to be rushing around after work, to go work out and then running over to small group)
Friday – Gym day: abs, back and arms
Saturday - Bike ride for 2 hours (this one I do with Ryan J)
Sunday – DAY OFF
I have been doing this now for a little over a week. I have to say, I MISS RUNNING. Hopefully the next 3 weeks go by quickly so that I can start changing my form and running outside again.
I know that changing my form won’t happen over night (my coach said that we would probably do like 10 minutes of running after my current workouts to start training my body on the proper form and then once it gets used to it, we can start increasing the time from there), but I am anxious to get back outside and start pounding the pavement (but pounding it with my toes so that it doesn’t destroy my joints, hehe).
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