Forums >Cross Training>What's it worth?
I work a lot physically , sometimes more than others. The task before me now is to cut about 5 hilly acres of grass a brush with a 300 pound walk behind tractor. Using my garmin, my average heart rate 125, distance isn't much per hour, but the work is hard. That HR would probably be about a 10-11 min per mile pace running for me, I guess, easier than easy but still not resting! It will probably take me 10 hours or so to cut this brush. I can do it in a few days or few weeks, doesn't matter.
I often also do lot more work every week around 100-110 which is around a 15 min per mile walking pace. We are talking 15-20 hours per week at this rate ,and I am on my feet much more than that.
Trying to figure out how to account for this in my training. It's pretty good cross training. Resting heart rate was high 40's before I started running and it's low 40's now after almost 6 months.
What's this stuff worth in miles? Should I count it as viable mileage for speed work to total miles percentages? I actually run about 20-25 miles per week and do 1 or two, 1/2 to 1 hour spins too. Racing focus is intended to be on 5k and below. High mileage is out of the question for now.
Anyone else work pretty hard physically and still train smart? What adjustments have you made. I am 50 BTW, but work was even a bigger challenge for running when I was younger. i never took it into consideration and always ended up quitting running competitively,usually burned out or injured. Don't get me wrong, I like hard work....and running.
A Saucy Wench
I wouldnt try to convert it to miles.
Since it is a variable but frequent part of your life you could create an activity (such as "WORK" ) and maybe workout types that make sense to you (high intensity, low intensity) etc. and log it by time.
The entire purpose of this is for you, over time, to pay attention to how it affects the rest of your training. Xtraining is a funny thing. Sometimes it helps more than it hurts, even if it is a lot of time on feet. But you can start to figure it out. "Hey brush clearing made my speedwork suck when I tried to do it the day after - maybe the next time I clear brush I'll pass on speedwork for a week, but the low intensity stuff seems to act as recovery. "
I have become Death, the destroyer of electronic gadgets
"When I got too tired to run anymore I just pretended I wasnt tired and kept running anyway" - dd, age 7
Old , Ugly and slow
Last week I started helping my dad with his apartments 1 day a week.
In the evenings I doing some work on my house and a rental house I own.
My day job is office work.
I run in the morning,
For me working in the heat is my problem.
I would cut back your running and add more miles as you adjust.
I am 52 but am doing a lot less physical work than you.
first race sept 1977 last race sept 2007
2019 goals 1000 miles , 190 pounds , deadlift 400 touch my toes
Thanks for the helpful comments. Today I ran for 2 miles went straight to the walk behind tractor for 40 minutes and then 2 more miles running. I really didn't feel that different from an 8 mile run....although the work on the tractor is more like doing the elyptical with the arm things.
One really good thing about being so active is that I am almost always warmed up enough to do some stretching, strength training or jump right into a good run workout, and since the work is at my small farm, I have a lot of flexibility in doing that. Very different than when I worked at a large plant or was building / remodeling houses for others.
My job isn't quite the same as yours, but there are some similarities. When I'm on the clock, I'm moving. Constant motion. I almost never get to sit down. Up and down ladders, constant walking, varying amounts of lifting heavy things, etc. I don't log any of it. I put in miles at work, and then I go home and get ready to run. I see it this way... it's a tradeoff. I gain fitness from my daily work activities, but they make me more tired when it's time to run. It's a balancing act.
A list of my PRs in a misguided attempt to impress people that do not care.
I have a full time job which is a lot of walking and manual labor, and my two days off every week I do landscaping on the side. For example yesterday I did 11 cubic yards of mulch, shoveling it's almost like a squat or a dead lift (great for legs and back) pushing a wheelbarrow and then spreading the mulch.
I just consider it all cross training that I'm getting paid to do, and any physical fitness gains is just an added bonus. But it dosnt count for running for me.
some call me Tim
Man, that takes me back... I used to jog behind a 56" cut Deere ~30h/wk as part of a landscaping job. Yeah, you don't get the best cut at jogging speed, but the deck was well balanced and the customers weren't terribly picky. For the small amount of time I was actually doing that and running, I kind of considered it like a two a day when I would run the same day as doing that kind of work. I kept the runs shorter or didn't go at all depending upon how I felt on the day. As far as logging, yeah, I'd do what Ennay said, just so you have a reference later when trying to sort out what works best for you. Good luck!
ME WEBLARG
Feeling the growl again
You can't convert it any more than you can cycling or any other activity. I'm sure it has some fitness benefits but it's not running.
When I was younger I baled a lot of hay. I often worked with my cousin and if things were going well...being teenage boys we'd push it as hard as the machinery would allow, there were a few days we put a thousand bales from field to mow. It was hard work and I spend much of the time with my HR up around where it would be on an easy run....hours a day. But my race times were a lot slower than a few years later when I started running just an hour or so a day.
"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand
I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills
Yeah, I might as well get over it, and find the best formula. The main thing is do the runs at the right pace, with the new garmin, I see that on recovery and long slow distance type runs that I was going too hard in the hills where I live and have been doing almost all my running .(had suspected that but didn't wan't to err on the side of being lazy). That may have been causing more trouble than my work.
By slowing down on the hills, and doing 10 miles on a treadmill this week, I finally got to 30 miles in 5 runs + 2 spins. Hope to go to 40, shooting for at least half of it on flat courses.
i was the most fit in my life when I had a 20-30 hour week of gardening. I never logged the time but obviously benefitted from the lifting and hill climbing and eccentric movement (especially as a woman) . Unfortunately I didn't race that fall - moved to Canada and back to a desk job. its hard to replicate that effort and still get fresh air. Good luck!
Recalculating...
That's what I am doing with most of my time Ayola, a 1 acre vegetable garden on a much larger property. Clean-up of the property is pretty much a big once a year job, which is due now.
When you were gardening you were also running regularly? I remember in high school that the basketball coach used to tell the kids if they wanted to improve their vertical jump over the summer that they should get a job lifting and moving heavy things.
My biggest work as cross training experiment was hitch hiking to Alaska from California with a large backpack and then working long and hard hours in a cannery for the summer. I mention the backpack, because I must have walked half way to Alaska with the darn thing on my back. The cannery had a great cafeteria and I ate very well all summer. When I came back and went to bootcamp that fall I was a faster runner than I had ever been by far with no running. I was only 18 though, so that had a lot to do with it too. Doing that now, I'd certainly just get tired!