Runningmonkeys

Now if you have finished weeks one and two of the program, you could well be feeling pretty happy with yourself, and so you should.  You have just spent two weeks cultivating the start of a bunch of habits which may drastically change your life.  If you stuck with it you have demonstrated the sort of patience and perseverance that will help you to achieve your goals.  Keep it up and who knows where it will all end.

This week we will be reinforcing the habits we have begun, breaking into some new ones, and continuing to prepare for full blown running.

Day 1)  First thing you are to do is warm up in the same way as last week.  Walk slowly for 1 minute, pick it up to medium for 1 minute, and then walk relatively fast for the third minute.  Does it feel good?  Do you feel ready?  We are also going to finish today’s session off with the reverse of the warm up.  1 minute fast walking, 1 minute medium and 1 minute slow, but with another slow minute at the end.

In between the warm up and warm down there is 18 minutes and you are going to run for a total of 9 minutes out of the 18.  It goes sort of like this:

warm up, then jog one minute, then walk fast for one minute.  Keep repeating until you’ve run your 8 sets and then warm down.  It looks like this:

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Of course this means that you are running and walking equal amounts in the middle of the session, and this will be considerably more stressful.  Take it easy on yourself.  You should be jogging the jogs very slowly.  Slow jogging at this stage will help your body to adapt just as quickly as will faster running but will put much less stress on your body and mind.  Remember that even if this doesn’t feel 100% pleasant it is part of the journey towards running, and so it can still feel 100% satisfying.

Day 2)  Repeat yesterday.  You’ll need the second day to settle into the new rhythm of run and walk.  It is a big step but one that your body will rapidly get accustomed to if you give it the chance.  Today we are going to start focusing on what resources your body has to fuel all of this new activity. 

Some of you will have already experienced extra hunger as a result of your extra activity.  Some of you will have felt a distinct drop in your energy level either straight after the run or sometime much later in the day.  These signs are your body telling you that it has noticed the change in your energy demands.  The equation of how much you eat to how much you use may have been drastically altered over the past weeks.  Each minute you have jogged has probably burned about 12 calories and each minute you have walked probably about 6 calories.  This will not have gone unnoticed by your fuel system, and so it will probably have sent out some warning signs that you have exceeded your usual expenditure of energy.  This is good!  You would expect this to be the case.  This is one area where you are about to realise a side benefit of running. 

You have just been given the key to control your own body weight.  If before you started running your body weight was relatively constant, then with the extra exercise and keeping your diet constant you will probably gradually start to lose weight.  If you are overweight this is good, if you are already at a healthy weight or even under weight then it can be bad.  Now you have the tools to control your own weight by fine tuning your diet.  There is a simplified formula that I have written more about here.  Use it carefully to reach your ideal healthy weight

Day 3)  Again you are going to pick up the commitment today.  After your warm up, you will be walking fast for 1 minute and then jogging for 2 minutes.  This pattern will be repeated 7 times with 2 slow minutes walk as a warm down.  This will keep you busy for 25 minutes today and will look like this:

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Day 4) will be the same as day 3 to help you get accustomed to the new load of jogging.

Day 5)  Today we are going to drop out a few more of the walking stretches until it looks like this:

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Today you have 4 blocks of jogging of 3 minutes or 4 minutes with 2 minutes of walking in between to catch your breath if you need it.  For some this may be particularly hard, and if this is so, you can put to work one of the tools that you have been practicing right from the start.  If you feel particularly uncomfortable then now is the time to put into practice your dissasociative focus by watching your environment.  This is exactly the same technique that a lot of elite athletes use to overcome performance related discomfort.  They are distracted from the negative sensations by focusing on what they see and hear or sometimes on pre-planned positive images or memories.  While their bodies keep on running, they set their minds free to wander.  This allows them to overcome negative sensations and get past discomfort.  You can use this tool just as well.  You have been practicing it and now you may benefit from the practice.

Day 6)  Today will be another big step, but again one that I have confidence that you will accomplish.  Having got this far, you have shown persistence and patience.  Today you will use it as you finish off the program.  We are not going to increase the number of minutes that you jog today.  All we are going to do is remove a couple of the walking minutes.  It will look like this:

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Does this look inspiring?  Are you ready to give it a go? A warm up, 7 minutes of jogging, 3 minutes of walking 7 minutes of jogging and then a big warm down.  Go to it!  You have been preparing yourself for this sort of load and so I know you are ready.  Your preparation over the last weeks has made it a forgone conclusion.  It is inevitable that you will complete this session and that is all there is to it. 

One tip for an important milestone like this is your preparation beforehand.  Lay out your clothes and get into the right mental state before it is time to go.  If you run in the morning, get ready the night before, to ensure that you don’t cheat yourself and back out at the last minute.  Also, make sure there is some kind of celebration waiting for you at home.  This could be as simple as a long hot bath, an excellent breakfast that you made in advance, a friend or family member who is expecting you home and victorious or just an entry in your journal.  Make the moment count as a celebration and it will spur you on even more.

When you have finished, stretch your muscles as you think back over the last three weeks.  Look at how far you’ve come and what different skills you have practiced.  Notice how gradual and sustainable the progress was and how good you feel about sticking to it.

Day 7)  Take a well earned break.  Smile and feel satisfied if you like, buy yourself some nice running socks, write a letter to a friend to tell them what you’ve achieved or whatever you do to enjoy success.  But there are three things that I would like every one to do today if they haven’t already: 

1)Think about where you want to go from here.   Do you want to run to keep fit or do you want to run some road races?  Do you want to join a club or get a coach or are you happy running by yourself?  Where will you go to find the next step in your progress? 

2)Start to fill in the gaps.  Although we have covered a few of the basics, there is so much to learn about running.  There are some excellent resources on this site as well as a few reviews of great running books that will help you to fill in the gaps.  The internet is full of information, some of it is good and some of it is questionable.  Make the first step today to find out something more about your new sport

3)Let me know how you went.  Tell me what was good and what was not.  Tell me about victory and defeat.  Tell me where you are going from here.  Also, if you like, you could tell your friends where you found this program.

That is the end of the three weeks.  I hope that it has been helpful to you and that it has got you running.  Of course it is not the end, but the beginning of a new sport for you, so I will be publishing a fourth week called “The next stage - Week four out of a three week program”

Keep your eye out for it.