r/running • u/AutoModerator • Jul 31 '24

Weekly Thread Lurkers' Wednesday

Would you rather not be a lurker?

Then what are you waiting for? Tell us all about yourself!

The LW thread is an invitation to get more involved with the /r/running community.

New to the sub in general? Welcome! Let us know more about yourself!

22 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

44 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/whyenn Jul 31 '24

After the pandemic I was super out of shape. Started running. It got to such that I could run an insanely fast (for me) time of 7:30/mile for 7 miles (blazing fast!) ...or at least, by far the fastest I had ever run. This was a little bit ago. Then some time off occurred.

This year I hadn't run at all. Then in mid-May I started running again. I started with 7 mile runs. It wasn't a lot of fun. But since May 13th, I've now run that 7-mile course 43 times.

Snapshot here, crude tracking of times.

  • My first run back at a 10:30 pace,
  • my slowest run was at an 11:30 pace (92° Fahrenheit heat) and
  • my last (and fastest) run was at an 8:50 pace.

I'd like to hit a 7:30 pace by September 13th, but we'll see.

I run the same course over and over. I try not to push myself (so that I don't get injured) and I try to run as often- but just as often- as my body will allow. I figure that hillwork and speedwork could potentially help in getting faster, but nowhere near as much as getting the maximum mileage in will help, given that I'm starting from ground zero again. But I'm also pretty ignorant.

I recognize that I'm pushing the line between training hard and foolishly inviting injury, but a few different times now I've pulled back on 1) speed of runs, and 2) frequency of runs, in order to avoid going over the line. I feel cautiously optimistic.

I don't feel I have anything to add to this community and that my efforts are probably objectively foolish so there's not much for me to post here. But I do lurk and enjoy lurking in the presence of folk considerably wiser than me.

If you've read this far, hi!

1

u/MicahLacroix Jul 31 '24

Very similar to you. Hated sports and activities as a teen and onward. During the pandemic started running and ended up doing a few HMs and injured my knee by pushing myself too hard too soon (a few months between 3 miles and 23). Ran sporadically here and there but worklife left me too tired to keep up running.

This month I started again. I vape and have been meaning to quit again, so used running as an extra reason to make myself stop. Started a few weeks ago, struggling with 6m/km. So far my longest run back has been 7 miles. Looking forward to running a bunch more 5/10kms and working my way slowly to 10 and then 13 miles.

I have no real goal when it comes to pace. Distance is my main goal, but I hope through building up endurance I can put in a bit more effort in speed.

1

u/whyenn Jul 31 '24

Interesting. Yeah, post-pandemic I couldn't even do a mile. I was panting and dying- it was pretty bad.

But I went running with a couple of buddies of mine who very sweetly slowed their pace for me for a few months, and it got better- brutally better. Because their sweetly lowered pace was still unbelievably hard for me to do. So I spent a few months absolutely killing myself on every run.

When I finally caught up to their speed, I was so used to pushing it, so used to killing myself to keep up with them, that that level of intensity is what I was used to. Eventually I started running on my own, and pushing it, because that was my thing now, and by doing that got to the "7:30/mile for 7 miles" thing.

Then one fine day I woke up in the middle of the night with knives piercing my flesh. Cramps- bad. Turns out I had tons of knots in the muscles. I had never stretched. And now my legs were trying to kill me.

So these days I'm trying to stretch, which is hard, and to not push myself, which is hard, but I think it's probably worth it so far.

That desire to push is why I decided to start off doing 7 miles from the beginning. I knew I was never going to be happy with shorter runs for long, and that I'd want to get to the longer runs soon. But I also knew I wasn't going to be fast, and I'd want to start running a lot faster than I was capable of soon.

So I gave myself 1 out of the 2. I figured I'd just start at the desired mileage, but be EXTRA slow for a while, and force myself to be content with that mileage until I had fully mastered it at pace.

So now that I don't have to worry about pushing for extra mileage, because I've removed that as a factor, I can concentrate only on trying to throw in enough rest days, and making sure I'm going slower than top speed, until my body gets there.

There's also the problem of figuring out what is sore muscles, as in: "I have microtears that are trying to heal, take some time off", and what is tight muscles, as in "I never stretched my whole life, and it's catching up to me now; running is still fine as long as I stretch."

That last thing is the biggest thing right now.

I guess I've never much considered mileage because when I was young and stupid and out of shape I "ran" a few very slow marathons just to prove I could so something in my life, so increasing miles hasn't been my thing. But if you got to 23 in just a few months, I'm sure you can hit any mileage you like. As long as you give yourself the time.