Terrible runner
May. 13th, 2018 07:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livThis was going to be a celebratory post, because I did something I'm pleased about: I restarted regular running after a two year gap. But it's going kind of badly, and I want to whine about this.
The motivation was that my partners' 9yo wanted to take part in a 'virtual race' with a Harry Potter theme. She planned with her parents to target this weekend's local Parkrun. I kind of wanted to join in, but I wasn't sure I'd be up to it, partly because I'm really slow and ineffective at running just in general, and partly because I'm quite out of shape. So I decided that I'd spend a month training, three runs a week, and see if I felt up to the Parkrun.
Now, I know that Parkrun deliberately doesn't set a minimum standard; they're fine with slow runners, and they're fine with a mixture of running and walking. But I wanted to feel confident that I could definitely complete 5K in a time round about the usual slowest time for my local meet before I committed to actually joining in an activity with the general public.
My training was loosely based on the middle section of C25K. I didn't have time, in a month, to go through the whole programme, and I know that running three times a week improves my fitness markedly whereas any less than that is really slow to make a difference. So I started with 30 minutes in intervals of alternating 5 minutes running (well, stumble-jogging) and 5 minutes walking. And I rotated around things like adding extra intervals, making the intervals a bit longer, and making a deliberate effort to go faster (thanks togreen_knight who recommended that sort of approach years ago.) By the end of month, I'd succeeded in running 12 times and not skipped any practices. I'd done three training runs where I completed 5K in N+1 minutes (N was my 'slowest reasonable Parkrun' target.) I was actually running in the running intervals, and power-walking for at least part of the recovery intervals, and I felt basically ready. And definitely, definitely fitter than a month ago.
I was pretty excited about the run yesterday, my first time at a public, officially timed 5K event (I meant to try Parkrun years ago, but never got round to it.) Also quite nervous; I had the most elaborate anxiety dreams about it, which is really daft, but there you go. Parkrun rules say kids need to be within arm's length of an adult, so 9yo decided to run alongside me rather than either of her parents. Conditions were great, cool and dry, and the organizers were calling it 'PB conditions'. I hadn't quite realized how huge the Parkrun near me is, they had nearly 600 participants!
What actually happened was that it was a dreadful, miserable ordeal. The track is a sort of figure-of-eight shape, where you run a small loop once and then the bigger loop twice. I started at the back of the pack with the kid, and we did all right for the first 5-10 minutes. But then we somehow took a wrong turn at the waist of the 8, partly I think because the fastest runners were already lapping us by then. A nice marshal found us when we crossed the correct route again, and put us back in the right direction. But by then we were behind the official tail volunteer. We managed to catch up with her and let her know we had gone wrong and had only just completed our first lap, and she dropped behind us, so that was ok.
I was running 5 minute intervals with 5 minute walking breaks. I timed them using the app Intervaly which just beeps at you at pre-set times, because I didn't want to disturb the other runners with the detailed audio feedback from my usual running app, Runkeeper. I'm not quite sure what went wrong but I didn't always hear the beeps. Anyway, although I'd been doing 5 minute intervals in training absolutely fine, in Parkrun I was finding them exhausting and could barely drag myself to keep going through 5 minutes. Which of course was absolutely no fun for a child running with me, but we were too far behind her other adults for her to switch to a different chaperone.
Anyway, we were quite a way behind the next slowest runner, and Parkrun is very emphatic that that doesn't matter, it's fine to be slow, and almost everybody who passed (lapped) us called out encouragement. But I felt a bit awful about making all the volunteers wait for us. Mainly I felt awful about how this run which I though I was confident I could complete was somehow right at the limit of what I could do. I just barely stumbled over the finish line and got a time of N+8 minutes; some of the extra was due to taking the wrong turn I think, but some of it was just because I was finding it so much harder than in training.
And then I collapsed, exhausted and weepy. And of course all my lovely partners and even the poor kid were absolutely wonderful about comforting me and getting sugar into me and reassuring me that it wasn't a problem that I'd been slower than I expected. Which sort of made me feel worse because the point had been to join them for a fun activity, not to try to complete a feat of endurance I could barely manage. I went home and broke down in absolute hysterics. Just couldn't stop sobbing and shaking for an hour, and even after I recovered partially I would fall apart again every time I had a minor setback. It's not that unusual that when you push yourself to your physical limits you end up emotionally labile, but I feel really silly the triggering ordeal was run-walking 5 km in a time slower than the numbers people always quote to tell you it doesn't matter if you're slow, slower than a decent walking pace really.
I think the answer is that I was over-optimistic in my judgement that I'd done enough training. I probably shouldn't try Parkrun again until I can do 5K in 5 minute intervals easily (not too worried about the speed, given Parkrun's serious commitment to inclusivity). But part of me is thinking, running is just not for me, I'm so unreasonably terrible at it. I keep on seeing reassurance that it doesn't matter if you can only do 5K, or if you can only manage a pace of N/5 minutes per km, you're still, as the kids say, valid. But after a month of fairly serious training, I can't manage that pace, and I can't reliably complete 5K or at least not without being exhausted to an unreasonable level. I don't know what else to do instead, though; I haven't yet found any other form of exercise that improves my fitness to the extent running does, and it also has the huge advantage that I can just put on a pair of trainers and do a workout, I don't have to be in a particular place at a particular time or coordinate with other people or whatever.
And, well, I feel particularly wormish for letting down an excited kid doing her first formal 'race'.
Where do I go from here? Yes, I am seeking advice. I might be prickly about emotional comfort, because part of what is making me feel so terrible about this is feeling like other people have to do emotional labour to support me in achieving something that should be relatively easy.
The motivation was that my partners' 9yo wanted to take part in a 'virtual race' with a Harry Potter theme. She planned with her parents to target this weekend's local Parkrun. I kind of wanted to join in, but I wasn't sure I'd be up to it, partly because I'm really slow and ineffective at running just in general, and partly because I'm quite out of shape. So I decided that I'd spend a month training, three runs a week, and see if I felt up to the Parkrun.
Now, I know that Parkrun deliberately doesn't set a minimum standard; they're fine with slow runners, and they're fine with a mixture of running and walking. But I wanted to feel confident that I could definitely complete 5K in a time round about the usual slowest time for my local meet before I committed to actually joining in an activity with the general public.
My training was loosely based on the middle section of C25K. I didn't have time, in a month, to go through the whole programme, and I know that running three times a week improves my fitness markedly whereas any less than that is really slow to make a difference. So I started with 30 minutes in intervals of alternating 5 minutes running (well, stumble-jogging) and 5 minutes walking. And I rotated around things like adding extra intervals, making the intervals a bit longer, and making a deliberate effort to go faster (thanks to
green_knight who recommended that sort of approach years ago.) By the end of month, I'd succeeded in running 12 times and not skipped any practices. I'd done three training runs where I completed 5K in N+1 minutes (N was my 'slowest reasonable Parkrun' target.) I was actually running in the running intervals, and power-walking for at least part of the recovery intervals, and I felt basically ready. And definitely, definitely fitter than a month ago. I was pretty excited about the run yesterday, my first time at a public, officially timed 5K event (I meant to try Parkrun years ago, but never got round to it.) Also quite nervous; I had the most elaborate anxiety dreams about it, which is really daft, but there you go. Parkrun rules say kids need to be within arm's length of an adult, so 9yo decided to run alongside me rather than either of her parents. Conditions were great, cool and dry, and the organizers were calling it 'PB conditions'. I hadn't quite realized how huge the Parkrun near me is, they had nearly 600 participants!
What actually happened was that it was a dreadful, miserable ordeal. The track is a sort of figure-of-eight shape, where you run a small loop once and then the bigger loop twice. I started at the back of the pack with the kid, and we did all right for the first 5-10 minutes. But then we somehow took a wrong turn at the waist of the 8, partly I think because the fastest runners were already lapping us by then. A nice marshal found us when we crossed the correct route again, and put us back in the right direction. But by then we were behind the official tail volunteer. We managed to catch up with her and let her know we had gone wrong and had only just completed our first lap, and she dropped behind us, so that was ok.
I was running 5 minute intervals with 5 minute walking breaks. I timed them using the app Intervaly which just beeps at you at pre-set times, because I didn't want to disturb the other runners with the detailed audio feedback from my usual running app, Runkeeper. I'm not quite sure what went wrong but I didn't always hear the beeps. Anyway, although I'd been doing 5 minute intervals in training absolutely fine, in Parkrun I was finding them exhausting and could barely drag myself to keep going through 5 minutes. Which of course was absolutely no fun for a child running with me, but we were too far behind her other adults for her to switch to a different chaperone.
Anyway, we were quite a way behind the next slowest runner, and Parkrun is very emphatic that that doesn't matter, it's fine to be slow, and almost everybody who passed (lapped) us called out encouragement. But I felt a bit awful about making all the volunteers wait for us. Mainly I felt awful about how this run which I though I was confident I could complete was somehow right at the limit of what I could do. I just barely stumbled over the finish line and got a time of N+8 minutes; some of the extra was due to taking the wrong turn I think, but some of it was just because I was finding it so much harder than in training.
And then I collapsed, exhausted and weepy. And of course all my lovely partners and even the poor kid were absolutely wonderful about comforting me and getting sugar into me and reassuring me that it wasn't a problem that I'd been slower than I expected. Which sort of made me feel worse because the point had been to join them for a fun activity, not to try to complete a feat of endurance I could barely manage. I went home and broke down in absolute hysterics. Just couldn't stop sobbing and shaking for an hour, and even after I recovered partially I would fall apart again every time I had a minor setback. It's not that unusual that when you push yourself to your physical limits you end up emotionally labile, but I feel really silly the triggering ordeal was run-walking 5 km in a time slower than the numbers people always quote to tell you it doesn't matter if you're slow, slower than a decent walking pace really.
I think the answer is that I was over-optimistic in my judgement that I'd done enough training. I probably shouldn't try Parkrun again until I can do 5K in 5 minute intervals easily (not too worried about the speed, given Parkrun's serious commitment to inclusivity). But part of me is thinking, running is just not for me, I'm so unreasonably terrible at it. I keep on seeing reassurance that it doesn't matter if you can only do 5K, or if you can only manage a pace of N/5 minutes per km, you're still, as the kids say, valid. But after a month of fairly serious training, I can't manage that pace, and I can't reliably complete 5K or at least not without being exhausted to an unreasonable level. I don't know what else to do instead, though; I haven't yet found any other form of exercise that improves my fitness to the extent running does, and it also has the huge advantage that I can just put on a pair of trainers and do a workout, I don't have to be in a particular place at a particular time or coordinate with other people or whatever.
And, well, I feel particularly wormish for letting down an excited kid doing her first formal 'race'.
Where do I go from here? Yes, I am seeking advice. I might be prickly about emotional comfort, because part of what is making me feel so terrible about this is feeling like other people have to do emotional labour to support me in achieving something that should be relatively easy.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-05-14 05:29 pm (UTC)While you might think that the equation is sport + people I love == OK, it's possible that what you've actually got is (sport + people I love) * public == OMG no. That's OK. One of the great things about adulthood is that you're allowed to do stuff on your own that they forced you to do in groups at school with great trauma (whether that's maths, or reading books, or PE), even if it's stuff that traditionally you might do with other people. You may have fallen over something that's a hard limit for yourself - so it's worth thinking about whether that's what's happened, or whether it's more easily fixable stuff.
Also, I find environmental factors really, really affect my breathing - most days, I walk to work at about 3.5mph for 0.9 miles, and go up the flight of stairs to my office, and I'm completely fine. There are plenty of days when the humidity is high, or the pollen is high, or the pollution is high, or it's cold, or it's a combination of all that, that I get to the top of the stairs and my lungs are waving a flag of surrender. That's not about me "not being prepared" - that's just how it is. (And I can tell this, by the fact that very often the very next day I can do that just fine.)
I've also worked at giving myself permission to deal with the fact that some workouts will be much worse than others, because of factors beyond my control. (Or not beyond my control - maybe I just shouldn't have had the stupid hangover ;) )
Also, you are allowed to need emotional labour - sport and people together, particularly for people who had traumatic school sports experience, is hard. It's OK to need some TLC.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-05-14 10:27 pm (UTC)Solidarity fist bump. Only I'm fat and it took me _decades_ to work out that no, I'm not unfit, I'm just not getting enough air. (I have another condition that affects my fitness at times, which doesn't make things easier.) I'm now much better at monitoring conditions, and my 'fitness levels' can fluctuate much more inside a week than possible, so eventually I stopped seeing 'being out of breath' as a personal failure.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-05-16 08:56 pm (UTC)