Links and Tips
Here are some links:
Evany linked to Julia Sweeney's blog recently, and I have now read her archives in their entirety. She is a wonderful writer. I love what she has to say. Her writing is brilliant and funny and full of science and pop culture and ideas about the universe and being a performer and a mom. I can't wait to get her new CD, Letting Go of God. I am in love with her.
My other favorite new (to me) site is Andrea's, which absolutely gives me chills with its beauty and wisdom.
Tsotsi is a pretty good movie (it won the best foreign language film Oscar this year), but I've decided I can no longer watch Baby In Peril films. I become fixated on the baby and can't focus on the idea that the baby is not actually in peril because this is make believe and it's probably a doll or a computer-generated baby half the time anyway. I worry that the baby is hungry, dirty, missing his mom and dad, cold, hot, scared, or all of the above. It's too much to take. And I don't even have a baby. (I mainly wanted to see this movie because of the awesome speech given when it won the Oscar.)
And this made me teary.
I'm now going to post my tips for the running program I did. This started as an e-mail to a friend who's just starting out. I'm no expert on anything, but this is how I made it through the program.
SHOES: Buy some good shoes. Go to a running store. Like, that only specializes in running shoes and running gear. Tell them what you're doing, and tell them you need them to watch you walk (or even jog around the store, mortifying, I know) in different shoes and tell you what kind you should get. Like, they looked at the shoes I wore in the store and noted what part of the heel was more worn down, that kind of thing. Everyone's feet are different and the way everyone's feet hit the ground = DIFFERENT. This is crucial. I spent something crazy like $150 that day, but I think it was good, because I was like, "Shee-it. I can't quit after spending this kind of dough."
SOCKS: Buy some good socks. I have these in white low-cut. I LOVE THEM. I have sweaty feet normally unless I'm wearing sandal-y shoes, but my feet stay dry as a bone in these.
TIME VS. DISTANCE: I was confused at first, along with many on the Cool Running message boards, because it says "time" or "distance" but the consensus on the boards is that beginners should run for time, not distance, because doing it for distance is just too hard. (In other words, say you're in week 4. And it says to jog 5 minutues OR 1/2 mile. I jogged 5 minutes. Which is way, way less than 1/2 mile for me. Get it? This is a FINE way to do it.) Even though 30 minutes for me by Week 9 did NOT equal 3.1 miles (5K) (and still, in fact, does not, for that would be about a 10-minute mile, and hello, no), I had no trouble running that distance when the time of the race came. Word on the street is that you don't usually make it to the actual race distance in training and that you just count on adrenaline and excitement to carry you through to that distance on race day. I scoffed at this notion, but apparently it's the truth.
MUSIC: Here's what you need to do: Whether you're running outside or on a treadmill, you need to program songs on your iPod to match the time of the running segments. This is easy to do. When you're in iTunes, right click the song and select "Get Info." You can adjust the start / end time of the song this way. That way, if you need 90 seconds of a song, you can make your song last 90 seconds. THIS IS KEY. Watching your watch or the treadmill for the time segments is NO WAY TO DO THIS. Let your songs keep the time for you; when one ends, you know that the segment is up and it's time to go to the next segment. I picked upbeat tempo songs for jogging and more mellow ones (not, like, BALLADS) for walking. This is the best tip I got of any when I was doing the program. (If you have another kind of mp3 player, you can probably do something similar.) (Shawn sent me this link that gives you a way to make timed playlists, too.)
CHEAT SHEET: I also printed out the instructions for the week on a little index card cut into a tiny square that I could keep in my palm or pocket or on the treadmill to refer to -- I don't have a good memory for things like this. This really helped, especially in the beginning.
SPEED: For the love of all that is holy, go slowly. I still jog at barely above a walk. I'm not kidding. It's the only way if you're a beginner. THE ONLY WAY.
TREADMILL INCLINE: I was instructed to put the treadmill on an incline of 1.0 or so in order for it to simulate running outside. (Apparently the treadmill on zero incline is way too flat / down-sloped to be like the real world.) That way once you get outside you will not go crazy. I did this from the beginning and think it helped.
The key thing for me was taking it one running segment at a time. If I thought ahead to the next one, or to the next day, or to the next week, I wanted to keel over and die. I was like, okay, I can totally make it through 3 minutes. That's just one Kelly Clarkson song. Of course I can!
I'm now doing a one hour running program which will then segue into a half-marathon training program. The only reason I'm even attempting that training is that I hope to just take it one step at a time. I never thought I'd make it through the 5K program, but I did. I hope that this training will work the same way. My favorite song to run to lately is the theme to The Greatest American Hero. I highly recommend it.
Evany linked to Julia Sweeney's blog recently, and I have now read her archives in their entirety. She is a wonderful writer. I love what she has to say. Her writing is brilliant and funny and full of science and pop culture and ideas about the universe and being a performer and a mom. I can't wait to get her new CD, Letting Go of God. I am in love with her.
My other favorite new (to me) site is Andrea's, which absolutely gives me chills with its beauty and wisdom.
Tsotsi is a pretty good movie (it won the best foreign language film Oscar this year), but I've decided I can no longer watch Baby In Peril films. I become fixated on the baby and can't focus on the idea that the baby is not actually in peril because this is make believe and it's probably a doll or a computer-generated baby half the time anyway. I worry that the baby is hungry, dirty, missing his mom and dad, cold, hot, scared, or all of the above. It's too much to take. And I don't even have a baby. (I mainly wanted to see this movie because of the awesome speech given when it won the Oscar.)
And this made me teary.
I'm now going to post my tips for the running program I did. This started as an e-mail to a friend who's just starting out. I'm no expert on anything, but this is how I made it through the program.
SHOES: Buy some good shoes. Go to a running store. Like, that only specializes in running shoes and running gear. Tell them what you're doing, and tell them you need them to watch you walk (or even jog around the store, mortifying, I know) in different shoes and tell you what kind you should get. Like, they looked at the shoes I wore in the store and noted what part of the heel was more worn down, that kind of thing. Everyone's feet are different and the way everyone's feet hit the ground = DIFFERENT. This is crucial. I spent something crazy like $150 that day, but I think it was good, because I was like, "Shee-it. I can't quit after spending this kind of dough."
SOCKS: Buy some good socks. I have these in white low-cut. I LOVE THEM. I have sweaty feet normally unless I'm wearing sandal-y shoes, but my feet stay dry as a bone in these.
TIME VS. DISTANCE: I was confused at first, along with many on the Cool Running message boards, because it says "time" or "distance" but the consensus on the boards is that beginners should run for time, not distance, because doing it for distance is just too hard. (In other words, say you're in week 4. And it says to jog 5 minutues OR 1/2 mile. I jogged 5 minutes. Which is way, way less than 1/2 mile for me. Get it? This is a FINE way to do it.) Even though 30 minutes for me by Week 9 did NOT equal 3.1 miles (5K) (and still, in fact, does not, for that would be about a 10-minute mile, and hello, no), I had no trouble running that distance when the time of the race came. Word on the street is that you don't usually make it to the actual race distance in training and that you just count on adrenaline and excitement to carry you through to that distance on race day. I scoffed at this notion, but apparently it's the truth.
MUSIC: Here's what you need to do: Whether you're running outside or on a treadmill, you need to program songs on your iPod to match the time of the running segments. This is easy to do. When you're in iTunes, right click the song and select "Get Info." You can adjust the start / end time of the song this way. That way, if you need 90 seconds of a song, you can make your song last 90 seconds. THIS IS KEY. Watching your watch or the treadmill for the time segments is NO WAY TO DO THIS. Let your songs keep the time for you; when one ends, you know that the segment is up and it's time to go to the next segment. I picked upbeat tempo songs for jogging and more mellow ones (not, like, BALLADS) for walking. This is the best tip I got of any when I was doing the program. (If you have another kind of mp3 player, you can probably do something similar.) (Shawn sent me this link that gives you a way to make timed playlists, too.)
CHEAT SHEET: I also printed out the instructions for the week on a little index card cut into a tiny square that I could keep in my palm or pocket or on the treadmill to refer to -- I don't have a good memory for things like this. This really helped, especially in the beginning.
SPEED: For the love of all that is holy, go slowly. I still jog at barely above a walk. I'm not kidding. It's the only way if you're a beginner. THE ONLY WAY.
TREADMILL INCLINE: I was instructed to put the treadmill on an incline of 1.0 or so in order for it to simulate running outside. (Apparently the treadmill on zero incline is way too flat / down-sloped to be like the real world.) That way once you get outside you will not go crazy. I did this from the beginning and think it helped.
The key thing for me was taking it one running segment at a time. If I thought ahead to the next one, or to the next day, or to the next week, I wanted to keel over and die. I was like, okay, I can totally make it through 3 minutes. That's just one Kelly Clarkson song. Of course I can!
I'm now doing a one hour running program which will then segue into a half-marathon training program. The only reason I'm even attempting that training is that I hope to just take it one step at a time. I never thought I'd make it through the 5K program, but I did. I hope that this training will work the same way. My favorite song to run to lately is the theme to The Greatest American Hero. I highly recommend it.
posted by eliza @ 1:50 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home