Forums >Running 101>What comes first??
Hawt and sexy
I'm touching your pants.
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San Francisco - 7/29/12
Warrior Dash Ohio II - 8/26/12
Chicago - 10/7/12
Do I increase distance or speed first??
Damn Yankee
Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. Carl Bard
As you start out a jogging program, your body will go through series of demanding changes. For every physical activity, it requires oxygen to perform (unless you're Richard Gibbens ;o)). As the stress, in this case, speed, increases; so does the demand of oxygen. With the slight increase in running speed, the demand of extra oxygen shoots up dramatically (some may say it increases by doubling and tripling and cubing and so on). As you keep exercising at the same level for awhile, your body’s ability to retain more oxygen improves. In other words, because your oxygen retention ability is higher, now you can run at faster speed with same “effort”. Speed will be gained by improving your oxygen uptake and you cannot force it to improve. Well, I’ll take it back. You can force it to some extent but you will quickly hit the plateau. Body’s ability to retain more oxygen is best gained by increased capillaries in the working muscles. And it is best developed with long continuous running. You cannot run long by running too fast because you will quickly get into anaerobic state, or oxygen debt situation, and the exercise will have to stop prematurely. The best advice is to alternate the length of your runs by going one day short, say 20 minutes, and long the next day, say 45 minutes. By the time you hit over an hour, you will be running faster without trying. Initially it is a good idea to go out on a trail or something after a certain length of time, say 15 minutes, and turn around and come back in the same time—15 minutes. This way you know you are not overtaxing your system. Once every other week or so, hop on the same course and run out same length of time (say 30 minutes and turn around and come back for an hour’s run). After a couple of month, you’ll notice you’re running further and further within the same length of time without forcing the pace. It is because what once was anaerobic speed, with the increased oxygen uptake level, now has become aerobic. Now recently there's a hot debate (at some other message board) on aerobic and anaerobic. Apparently there's a new study and, along with it, new terminologies seem to be coming out. For the time being, I'd intentionally ignore that to make my point more simple. So please bear with me. ;o)
RPE, or paces determined by racing.
How do you know how fast to go? Do you do long runs at a pace relative to a certain race time? How about lactate threshold tempos? What determines the paces you should be running? Thanks. --Jimmy