Keeping the Cadence

Finding my feet after convalescing has been harder than I thought. After so many years of non-running it all seemed to come back … until the injuries kicked in. But, now I have lost a lot of the condition that I had built up. I am also a lot more careful with where and when I run and have also been putting in time on muscle strengthening and stretching exercises. I think in the long run it will be OK and pay off. Although I have struggled with the longer distances I have also run some quick times.

I don't run with an ipod, mainly because I don't have a proper set of headphones that wouldn't fall out during exercise. When I was running track at school I concentrated on the 3,000 metres (approx 1.87 miles). I remember interval training sessions consisting of three to five 3,000 metre sets with a short rest in between. My coach at the time would tell me the time to run each set in 10 mins 30 secs and the recovery in between was based on my heart rate. Part of the training was to maintain a pace to finish in exactly 10 mins 30 secs. I can't sing to save my life, so I made up a silly little ditty and repeated it in pidgin English over and over again. It did the job of providing a cadence for me to run to ensuring that I would finish on time every time.

During my 4 mile run on Monday I realized that I had averaged sub 10 min miles – the fastest pace I have run all year. I was feeling rather tired and run down at the time so was surprised. I realized a bit later that I had been running with the Blues Clues theme song in my head… something that the kids had been watching all afternoon. Still not as fast as my school track days, but slowly slowy I am getting there!

"Blue skadoo'd, you can too!"