Runner — Touching the paces between 9 & 4
3 min readJan 10, 2022
- The body can do much more than your mind can think of.
- Running or any physical activity is the best example along with the progress check.
- The non-stop runs seemed horrid once upon a time as I had to stop to catch my breath even though my legs were doing great.
- The double-breathing technique (2 back-to-back inhale & 2 back-to-back exhales) led to calming the mind & enjoying the distance while running for the joy of it.
- And then finally, once at your comfortable pace, it's more of the law of inertia that keeps you going. It's almost possible to stop suddenly after a while. That’s something I always dreamt of as I wanted to do a Half-marathon & get into long distances to experience the pure joy of running.
- Having friends pace you always helps. It pulls you out of your comfort zones. Play with various paces on your right, left, behind you & ahead of you to see what works & what doesn’t.
- Choosing different locations, target points like counting poles, trees, cadence, playing mind games to keep your mind occupied rather than dreading how far is the finish lines helps.
- When it gets overwhelmed, do take it slow with spot jogs but never stop as it gets difficult to get started again as the heart rate drops.
- Do not get obsessed with numbers or people ahead of you as this tenses the nerves & breathing gets tougher.
- Do get to conversational easy chatty runs when you want the run routes on Strava to make a cute caricature. After all, we all run for fun.
- Monitor distance, paces, or any other numbers only towards the end of the run.
- Speed runs give you all the thrills. I started with a 100 meters speed run & gave it all towards my end at hitting the pace of 4. My best so far. Doing speed runs with higher strides is literally like flying on the ground. The slow-mos are best captured in speed runs. Now, this should motivate you to do more of these.
- Also, speed runs add a lot of pressure to the body & the knees especially. They need to be coupled with easy runs. If done excessively, can lead to hip injury & knee pains. Always recover & get your heart rate to normal before starting the next speed run intervals.
- After the race day, it's always an easy, conversational phase run.
