Hello there one and all...
I have just landed in Denmark and its great! Warm, Warm, Warm! No Kenya unfortunately, but after braving the English weather, I was very appreciative of what is known to be warm Danish weather (9 degrees).
As a matter of fact, it was so warm that I decided to venture outside for a jog! I put my head phones on, got my tunes jamming and hit the road. What an experience, the fresh country air filling my lungs and the great feeling of my soles pounding the forest trail.
There was one problem though. After getting up at four in the morning to travel, I knew my whole play list off by heart. The lack of spontaneity made running feel a little tedious. This is the next topic I would like to address.
Firstly, why is running so popular? Well it’s easy. Anyone can do it and additionally it is free. We all have a pair of muddy trainers from the golden days right? It seems that at the start of each year many of us decide to resolve to getting fit and it follows that the muddy trainers are dug up, used for a short while and then as we get bored, they go right back into storage.
It is, however, very easy to mix it up and retain some excitement. Here are a few easy tricks that you can incorporate into your regime:
Interval training: It’s not so much about how long you run, but how you run it. Believe it or not, High Intensity training burns a lot more calories than a slow jog over a longer period. If you are short on time or distance, then vary your speeds. Start of with a 5 minute and once you are nice and warm dive into a 1 minute sprint, switch up into a 2 minute fast run and then jog for 2 minutes. If you want you can even through in a walk at some point. Trust me, if you train like this and keep switching, by about the 6 round, you will need the walk!
Change your routes: Your muscles have the power to remember actions. Combine this with your brains ability to remember routes and eventually your usual running route will not provide large gains. To keep progressing, it is paramount to find new routes and try making them vary. Running off road is great because of the fact that the ground is not uniform, this helps with the variation. Milestone visualisation: It is very easy to get tired and think “I have done enough today, let me stop for now”. This is especially true when tackling a great running distance. If so, then the best way to conquer your mission is to break the route down in your head. These mini goal posts help to keep you motivated because when you reach a new one, you can renew your drive and push onto the next one. Eventually you are at your final destination and have ran 5, 10, 15 miles!
Mixing these tips will get you great results- but there is more.
Don’t tackle the same run every day. I advise taking one long run, two interval runs and one medium jog a week. Furthermore, try to ensure that no two weeks have the same order. This additional variation helps to shock your body; it is forced to keep on guessing what strain it will be put through next and because of this your progressive gains will be all the more intense.
Don’t tackle the same run every day. I advise taking one long run, two interval runs and one medium jog a week. Furthermore, try to ensure that no two weeks have the same order. This additional variation helps to shock your body; it is forced to keep on guessing what strain it will be put through next and because of this your progressive gains will be all the more intense.
Keep this in mind and soon you will be running like a beast! Speaking of beasts, I have stumbled upon a great iphone application that I cannot wait to try! Zombies, RUN! Is a game currently being developed that is designed to get you to run. The concept is fantastic: once loaded into your iphone, the user puts on his/her headphones and embarks on their running routine. All the while a story unfolds through the application that has you spacing the world by running away from zombies. The more you run, the more the story unfolds, the more levels you unlock and better still, the more you run! This hand app is complete with a statistic analysis that will calculate the calories you burn, speeds you reach and distances you cover. Be sure to check it out!
Time to get me an iphone.
Peace,
Lombz
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