Of an interesting thing recently, I've found myself doing more and more fitness wise with the help of trainers pushing me to do things that I would have never thought of doing. And it's not just the matter of being pushed, but watching other people do things that I would never have thought about doing.
Fortunate for me I have been surrounded by people that are pretty keen on doing things like long distance bike rides, running and fitness challenges a la crossfit (of which I have signed into doing starting from last year).
For the past few years, dropping percent body fat has been one of those things that I've been trying to do. It's challenging as it takes dedication, avoidance of going out for drinks and finding time and energy during the day to pickup the weights or go out for a run. My experience doing crossfit for the past 6 months has shown me that while the workouts are intense, in order to truly reap the benefits of the high intensity exercise, you've also got to supplement those workouts with other activities such as running to build lasting endurance or to really build upon what the workouts provide.
A 10 km run will generally burn 750 calories and the general consensus is that burning 3500 calories will allow a person to drop about 500 grams (or 1 pound) in body weight. Meaning on average you'll need to do 5 runs to drop about 1 pound. A high intensity crossfit work out for approximately 20~30 mins will only burn about 250 calories and I will admit that these workouts can be really tough to get through but to have lasting change in dropping body weight, you'll need to do 3x more classes as compared to doing a regular run session to burn the same number of calories. Well back to running.
I've gotten to the point where running 10 km is no longer a challenging feat for me to do as it's something that I regularly do, but kicking this up to the 21 km range has brought me back to facing the same challenges that I faced while trying to do my first 10 km run, which was pushing through running while running out of gas at the 6 km mark. I think that every runner while trying to extend their running range will face this at some point when trying to run new distances. For me in running half marathons, it's pushing past the 16 km mark where I can feel the legs get heavy and my speed drops. Depending on how you're running out of gas while running, you're either able to push through it or you've pretty much hit the physical limit of the body for that run.
I remember pushing to my first 18 km range run was the toughest as I ran out of gas during that run and it was very tough to keep on going. The second time around was much better and I was able to cut my running time down by 10 mins. I've never had the chance to run a full 21 km before the half marathon date but pushing through from the 17th km all the way to the end was both mentally and physically demanding. One of the goals that I had put out for myself for the 21 km run was to do the entire run unbroken (without needing to break into a walk). There were several instances where I was close to doing from mental and physical fatigue, but I managed to push through to the end. It was one of the toughest runs that I've ever had to do and I am pretty glad to have finished it (and event tempted to attempt another 1/2 marathon run in the future).
On good positive impact that I managed to find today is that my 10 km run speed has vastly improved since doing the 1/2 marathon run. After doing a long hiatus from running since starting crossfit, my running speed from the beginning of the year were pegged at just under 6 mins / km. After completing the 1/2 marathon run I managed to run 5 km all below 5 mins / km and the remainder at below 5:20 mins / km. I would say that I am pretty happy with those speed considering how few times that I've been running for the past few months.
Some great tools that I've been using for running are both the "Runkeeper" application for my phone where it keeps track of my distance and speed and the second is a heart rate monitor which I wear strapped to my chest and a wrist watch that displays my current heart rate which allows me to maintain a constant rate of physical exertion instead of having it unknowingly drop while running on feel.
As Japan is finally coming out of a very cold start of spring, I'll also be looking forward to doing long distance rides to the coast which will be about a 110 km round trip on bike.
