Slowing down
I have slowed down quite a bit recently.
Slow Running is about running for enjoyment, so after my marathon I decided to take it a bit easier, and from then on have sort of ticked off declining milestones - my last half marathon, my last 10 k - because for me running has never been about the challenge, but about feeling good. So having evangelised Slow Running, I slowed down.
But Slow Running, like any other activity, can get into a rut. Sometimes quite literally I run in a rut - the rut dug out by my own running shoes the day before, on the same run. The Rut Run.
As I have slowed down, so I find it harder to speed up. I hit my own running wall - I can't go faster, I can't run up hills as I used to. Which is funny, as hills used to be a strength of mine - I have always been slow, but I didn't used to slow down much more when running up hills - and I would recover quickly after a hill too, so my average pace was quite good even though my fastest was slow.
One other symptom interested me. My heart rate, even when I felt exhausted, hitting my wall, would never rise as high as it used. Some years - decades - ago I worked hard to regulate my running so I could run at 85% of my maximum heart rate through feeling it. I did that partly through checking a heart rate monitor and learning how it felt, and partly by simple measures like breathing, being able to talk while running, and so on. So my easy comfortable run is at about 65% of maximum heart rate, and my 'hard going' exertion level is at 85%. But as I slowed down, so my heart rate stubbornly refused to go much above 70%. Which mean either that I am so super fit that my heart can coast easily at any exertion level, or that I have lost fitness so that I just can't exert myself that much any more. Most likely the latter.
As so often, Sarah prompted me to question the inevitability of this decline. In many ways I was content - I honestly do feel that a marathon, even a half, is a bit more than I enjoy - but on the other hand perhaps a challenge has merit.
I have never run for a challenge - I run because I like it, because I enjoy the feeling. Races have been a way to confirm, to put down a marker, that I have reached a certain level, but I have never treated races as a challenge to rise to. Actually, I am not much of one to rise to a challenge - I tend to do things that I want to do, and if they meet some challenge along the way I am content but the challenge is not why I do it. But the down side of having such an unchallenged nature is that this slow decline can set in without troubling me too much.
I had started to think that my inability to run to an increased heart rate was a measure of my fitness declining, inevitably. Sarah suggested it was, to the contrary, a consequence of my having accepted an easy running ride and by consequence allowing my fitness to decline.
Now although I wrote Slow Running, I haven't always been simply a Slow Runner. To be a good Slow Runner you do have to sometimes run fast. Not too fast, but faster than slow. I have always done that - sometimes, when I feel especially fit, or inspired during a really nice run, I will go faster or further or run up hills rather than round them. It is actually good to do that - not as the goal of running in itself, but as an enjoyable thing to do sometimes when it feels right. I think I had forgotten that - forgotten that Slow Running, like any kind of running, can become Rut Running: that if you do the same thing, over and over, then it fits you only to do that one thing. Just as a habitually fast runner finds it hard to slow down, so a habitually slow runner finds it hard to go faster, or to go harder up hill. The solution is known to everybody - variety is the spice of life. Varying a run is the way to keep it fresh, and a good way to keep your fitness varied too.
So I started with what used to be my favourite form of non-Slow Running - hill sprints. Well, not sprints because I have lost quite a bit of fitness, but hill runs. Hill sprints are easy actually - all you do is to run up hills: sprint if you want to. The idea is to reverse the usual procedure of running fast down hill and slow up: instead, you run fast up the hill, and as slow as you can down it. The up hill gets your heart pumping, and the slow down hill lets you recover for the next hill. I am lucky because right near my home is a very steep hill - and beside it are woods and a field that have a gentler slope. So I can run up the steep hill, then gently round through the woods and across the field on the gentler down slope, to recover. I used to love hill sprints (though I didn't admit to that in Slow Running): but I haven't done any for ages. So I started again - but slowly. It is amazing when you rediscover something you used to enjoy, by doing it again - hill sprints are lovely - hills are my friends.
Funnily enough, in running up those steep hills, my heart rate went up to 85% of maximum. I didn't think it could do that any more. I was quite ready to accept the inevitable slow decline consequent upon my age (I was 60 this year, which may account for some of my limp acceptance of aging...): but I was quite wrong to do so.
To Run Slow, you sometimes have to run fast - or up hill.
Slow Running is about running for enjoyment, so after my marathon I decided to take it a bit easier, and from then on have sort of ticked off declining milestones - my last half marathon, my last 10 k - because for me running has never been about the challenge, but about feeling good. So having evangelised Slow Running, I slowed down.
But Slow Running, like any other activity, can get into a rut. Sometimes quite literally I run in a rut - the rut dug out by my own running shoes the day before, on the same run. The Rut Run.
As I have slowed down, so I find it harder to speed up. I hit my own running wall - I can't go faster, I can't run up hills as I used to. Which is funny, as hills used to be a strength of mine - I have always been slow, but I didn't used to slow down much more when running up hills - and I would recover quickly after a hill too, so my average pace was quite good even though my fastest was slow.
One other symptom interested me. My heart rate, even when I felt exhausted, hitting my wall, would never rise as high as it used. Some years - decades - ago I worked hard to regulate my running so I could run at 85% of my maximum heart rate through feeling it. I did that partly through checking a heart rate monitor and learning how it felt, and partly by simple measures like breathing, being able to talk while running, and so on. So my easy comfortable run is at about 65% of maximum heart rate, and my 'hard going' exertion level is at 85%. But as I slowed down, so my heart rate stubbornly refused to go much above 70%. Which mean either that I am so super fit that my heart can coast easily at any exertion level, or that I have lost fitness so that I just can't exert myself that much any more. Most likely the latter.
As so often, Sarah prompted me to question the inevitability of this decline. In many ways I was content - I honestly do feel that a marathon, even a half, is a bit more than I enjoy - but on the other hand perhaps a challenge has merit.
I have never run for a challenge - I run because I like it, because I enjoy the feeling. Races have been a way to confirm, to put down a marker, that I have reached a certain level, but I have never treated races as a challenge to rise to. Actually, I am not much of one to rise to a challenge - I tend to do things that I want to do, and if they meet some challenge along the way I am content but the challenge is not why I do it. But the down side of having such an unchallenged nature is that this slow decline can set in without troubling me too much.
I had started to think that my inability to run to an increased heart rate was a measure of my fitness declining, inevitably. Sarah suggested it was, to the contrary, a consequence of my having accepted an easy running ride and by consequence allowing my fitness to decline.
Now although I wrote Slow Running, I haven't always been simply a Slow Runner. To be a good Slow Runner you do have to sometimes run fast. Not too fast, but faster than slow. I have always done that - sometimes, when I feel especially fit, or inspired during a really nice run, I will go faster or further or run up hills rather than round them. It is actually good to do that - not as the goal of running in itself, but as an enjoyable thing to do sometimes when it feels right. I think I had forgotten that - forgotten that Slow Running, like any kind of running, can become Rut Running: that if you do the same thing, over and over, then it fits you only to do that one thing. Just as a habitually fast runner finds it hard to slow down, so a habitually slow runner finds it hard to go faster, or to go harder up hill. The solution is known to everybody - variety is the spice of life. Varying a run is the way to keep it fresh, and a good way to keep your fitness varied too.
So I started with what used to be my favourite form of non-Slow Running - hill sprints. Well, not sprints because I have lost quite a bit of fitness, but hill runs. Hill sprints are easy actually - all you do is to run up hills: sprint if you want to. The idea is to reverse the usual procedure of running fast down hill and slow up: instead, you run fast up the hill, and as slow as you can down it. The up hill gets your heart pumping, and the slow down hill lets you recover for the next hill. I am lucky because right near my home is a very steep hill - and beside it are woods and a field that have a gentler slope. So I can run up the steep hill, then gently round through the woods and across the field on the gentler down slope, to recover. I used to love hill sprints (though I didn't admit to that in Slow Running): but I haven't done any for ages. So I started again - but slowly. It is amazing when you rediscover something you used to enjoy, by doing it again - hill sprints are lovely - hills are my friends.
Funnily enough, in running up those steep hills, my heart rate went up to 85% of maximum. I didn't think it could do that any more. I was quite ready to accept the inevitable slow decline consequent upon my age (I was 60 this year, which may account for some of my limp acceptance of aging...): but I was quite wrong to do so.
To Run Slow, you sometimes have to run fast - or up hill.
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