intervals, and why I'm bad at moderation
Mar. 20th, 2006 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aithneI woke up on Saturday morning and decided to go run intervals. Intervals is something I love doing, but I can only do it outside--the intervals I really like to do aren't safe for me to do on the treadmill.
I have a four-mile course that I run, on the Cedar River trail. I rapidly walk the first partial quarter-mile, to the first mile marker. Then I run for a mile, to make sure I'm good and warmed up, then walk a quarter-mile. And then I start doing intervals.
Basically, at each quarter-mile marker, I tuck my head, reach out my arms, and go. The idea is to run as fast as I possibly can for the space of about a minute or so. Just flat-out speed without any regard for energy conservation. During an interval, I'm not thinking about the fact that I have two more miles left to go on my workout. I'm thinking about pushing myself as hard as I possibly can.
It feels amazing to run like that, especially in the first thirty seconds before my cardiovascular system figures out what's up and starts telling me I'm going too fast. I just let go and fly. I stretch myself out along the track and there's a moment of peace in there where I am perfectly centered in my body.
Then my cardio system goes, "Hey hey whoa!" and I push on just a little farther, then slow to a walk. I walk the rest of the quarter-mile, then do it again at the beginning of the next quarter. Maybe I'll run a whole quarter-mile somewhere in there, at a slower pace, and then it's back to intervals all the way home.
The amount of time I can run flat-out decreases pretty rapidly after the first four intervals or so. Sometimes I make it to only about thirty seconds before I just can't go any more. The last interval I probably only went fifteen seconds or so. I cooled down, drank my water, and then came home and fell over for a bit before I was able to take a shower and get on with my day.
I was sore yesterday, and today I'm still feeling it a bit, so tonight I'll do long and slow, just trying to get the rest of the lactic acid out of my leg muscles. It reminds me of the personal trainer I had an appointment with a few weeks back. After listening to me talk, she said, "You're sort of an extreme personality, aren't you?"
Yep, I am. I always want to push my body to the limits. If I'm going to make a change, it needs to be a short, sharp shock; I need a clear delineation between before and after. I find solace at the outer edges of my endurance.
Now, I understand why this isn't a good thing sometimes. Supposedly, moderate changes are a lot easier to sustain than extreme ones. Unfortunately, I suck at moderation. Moderation takes up a lot of brain power; it's a constant negotiation with the bad genius who lives inside my head and says things like, "just one wouldn't hurt" and "slacking off isn't that bad". I hate arguing with myself constantly.
If I seem rigid sometimes, sometimes locked into routines and patterns that I am reluctant to change, this is part of the reason why. Because otherwise I get exhausted from all of the negotiation with myself and give up. And it's not a clean exhaustion either, it's a guilty and frustrated exhaustion. I prefer the clear exhaustion that comes at the extremes. At least I know, when I hit that wall, that it's going to come and it's going to hurt and that's all right, because it's only pain. And pain is something I'm very good at handling.
It's the price of not having to argue with the bad genius, of being able to say "No" and mean it.
Keep going until you fall; and the moment you can move again, get up and keep going some more. It doesn't work for everyone, and in fact it doesn't work for most people. But it works for me.
*****
I was working on the recap last night, and got derailed in my accounting by a conversation between my two characters that they absolutely insisted on having. So I'll finish that and move on; I may cut it out later, but at least they'll have gotten to have their argument.
It's been interesting to write the interactions between these two. They're still in the process of growing up, which means that even after twelve years together they have conversations about things that either haven't come up or when they did come up they were academic, but now they're not. One tends to talk around things, taking an indirect approach, and the other bulls into things head-on once she sees an opening. They're used to each other, and how the other gets to the heart of a discussion, and they depend on that with each other.
And after twelve years of living in each others' heads, they can still surprise each other.
*****
It's the equinox, which means I can start running in the mornings again! And it's spring, my favorite time of year! Yaaay!
I have a four-mile course that I run, on the Cedar River trail. I rapidly walk the first partial quarter-mile, to the first mile marker. Then I run for a mile, to make sure I'm good and warmed up, then walk a quarter-mile. And then I start doing intervals.
Basically, at each quarter-mile marker, I tuck my head, reach out my arms, and go. The idea is to run as fast as I possibly can for the space of about a minute or so. Just flat-out speed without any regard for energy conservation. During an interval, I'm not thinking about the fact that I have two more miles left to go on my workout. I'm thinking about pushing myself as hard as I possibly can.
It feels amazing to run like that, especially in the first thirty seconds before my cardiovascular system figures out what's up and starts telling me I'm going too fast. I just let go and fly. I stretch myself out along the track and there's a moment of peace in there where I am perfectly centered in my body.
Then my cardio system goes, "Hey hey whoa!" and I push on just a little farther, then slow to a walk. I walk the rest of the quarter-mile, then do it again at the beginning of the next quarter. Maybe I'll run a whole quarter-mile somewhere in there, at a slower pace, and then it's back to intervals all the way home.
The amount of time I can run flat-out decreases pretty rapidly after the first four intervals or so. Sometimes I make it to only about thirty seconds before I just can't go any more. The last interval I probably only went fifteen seconds or so. I cooled down, drank my water, and then came home and fell over for a bit before I was able to take a shower and get on with my day.
I was sore yesterday, and today I'm still feeling it a bit, so tonight I'll do long and slow, just trying to get the rest of the lactic acid out of my leg muscles. It reminds me of the personal trainer I had an appointment with a few weeks back. After listening to me talk, she said, "You're sort of an extreme personality, aren't you?"
Yep, I am. I always want to push my body to the limits. If I'm going to make a change, it needs to be a short, sharp shock; I need a clear delineation between before and after. I find solace at the outer edges of my endurance.
Now, I understand why this isn't a good thing sometimes. Supposedly, moderate changes are a lot easier to sustain than extreme ones. Unfortunately, I suck at moderation. Moderation takes up a lot of brain power; it's a constant negotiation with the bad genius who lives inside my head and says things like, "just one wouldn't hurt" and "slacking off isn't that bad". I hate arguing with myself constantly.
If I seem rigid sometimes, sometimes locked into routines and patterns that I am reluctant to change, this is part of the reason why. Because otherwise I get exhausted from all of the negotiation with myself and give up. And it's not a clean exhaustion either, it's a guilty and frustrated exhaustion. I prefer the clear exhaustion that comes at the extremes. At least I know, when I hit that wall, that it's going to come and it's going to hurt and that's all right, because it's only pain. And pain is something I'm very good at handling.
It's the price of not having to argue with the bad genius, of being able to say "No" and mean it.
Keep going until you fall; and the moment you can move again, get up and keep going some more. It doesn't work for everyone, and in fact it doesn't work for most people. But it works for me.
*****
I was working on the recap last night, and got derailed in my accounting by a conversation between my two characters that they absolutely insisted on having. So I'll finish that and move on; I may cut it out later, but at least they'll have gotten to have their argument.
It's been interesting to write the interactions between these two. They're still in the process of growing up, which means that even after twelve years together they have conversations about things that either haven't come up or when they did come up they were academic, but now they're not. One tends to talk around things, taking an indirect approach, and the other bulls into things head-on once she sees an opening. They're used to each other, and how the other gets to the heart of a discussion, and they depend on that with each other.
And after twelve years of living in each others' heads, they can still surprise each other.
*****
It's the equinox, which means I can start running in the mornings again! And it's spring, my favorite time of year! Yaaay!
