Hi Bloggers,
To follow up my recent post on staying healthy as you get older, I just thought I'd mention my latest training programme for running. Up to now I've always gone for just doing a decent distance at the best pace you can. For example, 5 km in half an hour might seem reasonable for most in their sixties. However, over time you inevitably find yourself slowing down. In fact, every year will seem to take a minute off your time. And it's extremely frustrating trying to get your speed back to where it was. Using the regular distance run just doesn't do it. Special measures are needed.
The main thing one needs to introduce into one's programme is intensity training, i.e. in addition to the regular endurance distance training. Currently, I'm working on two ways to do this. The first is what is known as interval training. Here, you jog at your regular pace for two or three minutes and then burst into a sprint for between 30 seconds and one minute before dropping back to your regular pace again to recover. Repeat four or five times, or for the whole duration of your run. For this you might choose to cover a much shorter distance than usual.
The other method is simply to try to run a kilometre, or maybe just 500 metres, as fast as you can. Really go hell for leather at it. Then stop and take a complete break of two to three minutes to recover. Repeat four or five times.
Both these methods are incredibly intense and seriously force your body to uplevel its performance parameters. The main thing you will notice is your breathing. It will be strained to the maximum. As a result you will improve your aerobic capacity, which I was shocked to learn can decrease by 10% every decade once you're over 50.
More to come …...
To follow up my recent post on staying healthy as you get older, I just thought I'd mention my latest training programme for running. Up to now I've always gone for just doing a decent distance at the best pace you can. For example, 5 km in half an hour might seem reasonable for most in their sixties. However, over time you inevitably find yourself slowing down. In fact, every year will seem to take a minute off your time. And it's extremely frustrating trying to get your speed back to where it was. Using the regular distance run just doesn't do it. Special measures are needed.
The main thing one needs to introduce into one's programme is intensity training, i.e. in addition to the regular endurance distance training. Currently, I'm working on two ways to do this. The first is what is known as interval training. Here, you jog at your regular pace for two or three minutes and then burst into a sprint for between 30 seconds and one minute before dropping back to your regular pace again to recover. Repeat four or five times, or for the whole duration of your run. For this you might choose to cover a much shorter distance than usual.
The other method is simply to try to run a kilometre, or maybe just 500 metres, as fast as you can. Really go hell for leather at it. Then stop and take a complete break of two to three minutes to recover. Repeat four or five times.
Both these methods are incredibly intense and seriously force your body to uplevel its performance parameters. The main thing you will notice is your breathing. It will be strained to the maximum. As a result you will improve your aerobic capacity, which I was shocked to learn can decrease by 10% every decade once you're over 50.
More to come …...
2 comments:
Hi Rob, I recently decided to re-visit my long-neglected blog. I'm going to be using the main one to highlight the plight we have got into viz-a-vis climate and some of the solutions I have been thinking about.
I will also begin a blog about my fitness regime, mainly running, and races I have entered etc. I was astonished to see that you too have resurrected your blog and are featuring running as well. I don't know where in the world you are right now but I am very much into the parkrun phenomenon. My best time for 5K is 29:37 and for 10K 1.04:19.
I'm in York at the moment and am mostly entering trail events, though I did do a 12.7K road race in Nonthaburi last time I was in Thailand in 2019, strange distance I know, it was the route between two bridges.
All this makes me wish we had entered that off-road race in Kanchanaburi province we briefly toyed with as a two person team when we worked in Bangkok. Good to hear your vision problem has abated. Best wishes to you and the family.
Hi Ian,
Great to hear from you. I've checked out your blog. I like the new direction you're going in. Getting green! When I come back to the UK, hopefully in a couple of years, I'm planning to get properly into all that environmental stuff. I feel particularly strongly about plastic. That's now as big a problem facing mankind as global warming. Send me an email, as that may be a better way to communicate.
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