My Journey With Health And Fitness – The Month Of July

Out early for my 8k run this morning and I was a bit stunned at the difference in temperature compared to the last week. There was a bit of cloud cover and I never really got overly warm running today (do not in any way equate this to me not sweating). It was actually a nice change to be more comfortable doing the run though apparently the heat will return for the weekend. I did do the smart thing and when I went for my walk a bit later in the morning I made sure to bring a light jacket.

I had committed to training hard the month of July in the hopes of starting to whittle away at the few pounds I have gained as well as working on my new goal for mastering running up a hill at the end of my run as well as getting my speed up. I admit, I have been working hard trying to accomplish this. 6 days a week for all of July I averaged running/walking 30,000+ steps a day which is 20+km (note Saturday was my best day ever where I pushed it to 40,000 steps and 26km). That is an awful lot of mileage to put on my running shoes which I think I am going to change out before they start to wear. I can say that by the end of the week my legs would often be questioning my sanity but I kept moving which is what I need to do.

So how is it going? Well the speed issue is interesting. I know it is not possible for me to push myself on every run, that is just going to lead to an injury. Instead I pick a couple runs during the week to do some intense intervals. What I have started to notice is that my pace is slowly picking up. It hasn’t been necessarily a huge difference but I am steadily getting fasted. As a matter of fact, when I did my 10k last week I had shaved 7 minutes off compared to my previous 10k run. I figure that is progress. I know I have plenty of time to get to my peak condition before I try another 1/2 marathon so I am just going to be thankful for slow and steady progress.

As for the hill, that thing just kills me. It doesn’t matter if I am running up it during k5, 7 or 9 it is just hard every time. Still, I do everything I can to try and improve my speed. I did a little test of my fitness level this week. My husband had pointed out a really steep hill and asked if I had tried walking up it. Unlike the dreaded Oxford Hill this one lasted only 4 blocks but has a nasty grade. Yesterday I tried that hill and surprised myself when I got home and told him it wasn’t bad at all and while he looked at me like I was crazy I said, nope, didn’t even get to my peak heart rate. Ok, it may be a stretch to see how that relates to me struggling to run up a hill during my last kilometer of a run but it tells me that I just need to keep at it and I will eventually get there. In the meantime I think I might do a little more work on walking up the really steep hills to see if that helps.

Tomorrow I am heading up to my trailer for a much needed break. I’ve decided a few days of only doing 5-6k runs (along with walking the dogs of course) is just what I need. As I have mentioned I don’t like typing out my blog on my phone or iPad so you may not see another post for a week. That is of course unless I make some stupendous breakthrough in training, that I will post right away.