Running for Beginners

Thursday, September 24, 2009

So I am the first to admit that I have never a "runner" nor will I really ever be - well at least in the sense that I'll never just get up and run 5 miles, no problem. 3 miles is still my maximum, and that wasn't at any great speed. Anyways, my mom has always been the same way, and in seeing in how we both "learned to run" I've realized that everyone definitely has their own method of doing it, and it's definitely very individualized.

The Walk/Run Method - so my mom is definitely a walk/runner; and she made it all the way from not being able to even go a half mile to doing a half marathon, all in about a year's time, which is impressive! She basically just started out with a method of like Walk 4 min/Run 1 min; and then slowly worked all the way to Walk 1min/Run 4 - every day she just ran a little bit longer than the day before. And this really works well if you just are the kind of person who could never run a mile all at once, but could do a good distance if you just were able to do some walking breaks in between.

The "Just Do It" Method - so, there's really not much to teach in terms of my method of how I learned how to run finally - for me, I think it was mainly mental. I did try doing some walk/running, but for me, every time I would slow down to like 3 mph, it was SO hard to go back up to running like 5mph. So, I just always do like a 1 minute warmup at around 3mph, then crank it up to 5-6mph, run at that speed until I can't take it anymore, then dial it down to like 4.5mph. And I basically just run as much as I can - and then if say I could only run a mile, I'll still do other cardio so that I didn't only have a 15 minute workout. And over time, if I really do it every day, I can run a little farther each time. And I realized that I really need to start out at like the highest speed I can handle and go down from there; because like I said, a lot of this is mental, 5mph doesn't seem as bad when you've just been doing 6, right?