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Showing posts from 2018

End of the First Week

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So I had a plan to run 3km per day every weekday this week and that simply did not work out. I wasn't able to find time before or after work to get in my runs and so I was disappointed that I only got one run in for the week. I was able to walk to work and back most days, so it wasn't a complete loss. This weekend I'm running 6km per day on Saturday and Sunday at a slow pace. I got my first 6km run in this morning and then went into the gym to do a timed run of 2km at a 6.5 minute pace. Tomorrow I will head back out and run another 6km slowly. The good news is that despite not getting out enough this week, I'm still on my plan for pace . Next weekend it gets a lot harder. I need to run 8km per day and more importantly, double my "speed run" distance to 4km and do it in a 6 minute pace.

First Day of 10K Training

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I promise I won't post every day but I wanted to post after my first day on my new training plan to get to under 50 minutes on my 10K race . For the very first day I went out gently at ran just under 4km at a slow pace. I was running in city traffic and there were a lot of stops along the way. I didn't bring my watch or phone with me, so I don't know what my pace was and that's ok because I'm not supposed to care! I then went to the treadmill at my gym to run at pace. After a short warm-up, I ran as planned to get to a 7 minute pace for 1km. I need to learn how to translate my treadmill's velocity setting to achieve the correct pace. After some experimentation, I settled between 8 and 8.5 to get a 7-minute pace. I was feeling really good after running this paced kilometer, so after a short rest, I ran another half kilometer at the velocity setting of 10, which worked out to a 6-minute pace. That's a good preview for next week, where my goal is to r

Training for a 10K in Under 50 Minutes

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I am going to run a 10K race in four weeks and my goal is to improve my time to under 50 minutes. The last few 10K races I have run have all clocked in at just over one hour. I was reading an article about continuous improvement and decided to apply that thinking to my training program over the next month. I'm going for minor improvements every day and every week. I'm going to measure improvement in both the time I can run a "race pace" kilometer and the total number of kilometers I can run at "race pace." The twist is that my "race pace" will continuously get better every week. So each weekend, when I'm doing my improvement testing, I should be running more kilometers and I should be running them just a little bit faster than the week before. If all goes well, I will be running 10K at a pace of under 5 minutes per kilometer by the time of the race. This is my plan: Starting Weekend (this weekend) Taking is slow and easy to get

How to Burn 5,000 Calories per Day

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5,000 calories per day is a lot of calories and burning that amount every single day is no small feat. I read a great response to the question of how to burn 5,000 calories per day over on Quora and thought I would share some of the highlights (and surprises) here. The author of the original Quora response is Alex Lightman . First of all, his top recommendation is to get plenty of sleep on a consistent basis. At least 8 hours per night. I agree. Too many people overlook the benefits of sleep. Alex recommends a fitness tracking device, such as a Fitbit Surge, but I'm not a fan of wearing a fitness device, even though I used to be. I think a simple plan with consistent exercises is the best and you don't really need a device for those. The go-to exercise he recommends is walking (note: not running) on a treadmill. I trained exclusively on a treadmill for a recent half marathon recently because of the foul weather where I live and I agree that a treadmill is a great