My Journey With Training – Interval Training

I am currently at my trailer (note for those of you in B.C. the trailer is within my health region) enjoying some alone time. I think it will be a nice mental health break as I can just sit back and relax for a few days. I am opting to reduce the workouts a bit but will still do training and I picked up lots of healthy food to keep me on track.

I started working with my coach 4 months ago. If you recall that 1st day did not go well despite the fact it was 10 intervals of walking for 4 minutes and running for 1 minute. Unfortunately my bad leg rebelled at being forced to use muscles that had been pretty much ignored for nearly 30 years. My coach immediately had me take a step back as her goal has always been for me to build up slowly and get me to that 10k injury free. She added some strength training for my joints and cut my intervals back to 4:30 minutes of walking and 30 seconds of running. The 2nd week at my attempt at training went really well and helped me be motivated to keep going.

I don’t have any sort of plan for this training, I just report in to my coach at the end of the week and she tells me what to do the following week. Sometimes it has been to only increase my intervals for 1 of the 3 days the following week. Other times she has recommended I reduce the walking intervals others it is increase the running intervals. Often when the changes happen she has me reduce the number of intervals from 10 to 8 when we make changes to see how it goes. I ensure I give her a complete update each week so she can decide what to do next. Always it is with the advice that I need to listen to my body. This is probably the best advice she has given me.

At last week’s update I admitted to her the recent change had actually been quite easy and I was looking forward to what would come next. Today I reflected on what I have accomplished. After 4 months I have only missed 2 days of training and that was during my last trip to the trailer. Those 2 days gave me both a short mental and physical break and allowed me to step up my motivation. But I realized while we have gone slowly, I have come a long way. That 1st full week of training I managed to run a total of 5 minutes, 10 intervals at 30 seconds. Today I did 33 minutes of running, 10 intervals at 3:30 minutes each with only 1:30 minutes of walking in between. Wait, I ran for 33 minutes, how the hell did that happen? Well apparently building slow and steady is an effective way for me to get to my goal. Yes, I was covered with sweat by time I finished today but I had a huge smile on my face.

One other thing I want to note, I give these old muscles a lot of respect for getting me here. I always do a leisurely 10 minute walk before I start my training and then a good 20+ minute walk afterwards. Doing so means I have not really felt any strain on my muscles and so they continue to work with me.

The bottom line, my coach absolutely knows what she is doing.