Learning to run slow
You push it and push it and push it and eventually it will break!
When I re-started running back in October 2019 I was feeling unfit and my stamina was non-existent. The runs were short and slow, although I was always trying to push the pace as much as I could. Over time I’ve got quicker, began running further and found what I believed to be a comfortable, respectable pace. On some runs I pushed it further aiming for times that I believed would say I’m a good runner. I’m talking about sub 20 minutes 5K and sub 45 10K. Currently my 5K time on Strava stands at 21:52, while my 10K is 45:09! Close! I’ve always thought to get near to those magic times I needed to keep pushing and couldn’t possibly run at a slower pace than 5 minutes per kilometre. In my head I couldn’t compute how running slow could possibly make me faster and achieve these goals. Now as my running education grows I’m reading that’s possibly not the case and I’m learning that all I’ve done by constantly running at a reasonable pace is have my legs tell me we can’t keep doing this, we need to slow down, have some time to recover. Plus you’re 46 you know, not 26.
So with my right achilles simply saying enough is enough back at the end of February I began to educate myself a bit more and understand that there’s two forms of training, ‘aerobic’ and ‘anaerobic.’ It’s recommended 80% of your weekly runs are ‘aerobic’ slower, easy runs that bring down your heart rate. These slower runs should help build endurance and give your body and muscles time to recover from the more strenuous ‘anaerobic’ efforts that take up the remaining 20% of the running week and push your heart rate to the max. Training and running a marathon is going to be new to me. So the key will be to get the balance right with effort, recovery and rest to build strength, endurance and bring the heart rate down and over time the pace up.
Now my achilles is on the mend, I’m doing plenty of exercises and stretches focusing on the ankle, it’s not quite there yet but it’s feeling better with each passing day. With the marathon 10 months away I’m looking forward to these future slow runs and understand that they are in integral part of running longer distances, after all it is a marathon I’m going to be training for and not a sprint.
