Monday, May 22, 2006

Running is different from Swimming

Ok many of you may know Crystal and i are training for a triathlon that is to happen at the end of July. we have been training now from a little over 3 months and I must say I think it is going really really well. Crystal could not run for more than 5 minutes when we started and now she is up to running 25 minutes, riding 45 minutes and swimming 20 strait. These are all big steps for her especially seening that she never has done any true cardio training in her life. She was a cheerleader in high school but they didn't do a lot of Cardio training like the way I did when I swam up to college. So I am extremly proud of where we are and if we both just finish the tri-athlon that will be a huge huge step or both of us. The tri-athlon is a .6 mile swim, 12 mile bike, 3.1 mile run so it is considered a sprint but that is still a lot of stuff.

Anyways this post was not about that. This was about my learning that running is different from swimming. When I was a swimmer I was a distance swimmer. This basically ment that my body, heart, and lungs break down a lot slower in a race than a sprinter. This also means that I am no 100 dash kind of guy. I am short, stumpy, and not loaded with big honkin muscles for great amounts of power. So I signed up for a 5K (3.1 mile) run with my church this past weekend. I thought it would be a good test to see how good of shape I was in seeing that I had only been working out 3 months I was not expecting to much. Well in distance it is important to build to your race speed not to start out there. This means the 3rd mile should be your fastest mile or atleast no slower than your 2nd and 1st mile. Well I took this race out like a mad man, died on the 2nd mile and got my 2nd wind for the third mile. I did pretty well though I finished 24th overall out of about 200 and won my age group of 20-24. I ran 3.1 miles in 24:36. Not to shabby but if I had ran my own race, like I used to swim them, I would have been faster...just another learning expierence.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's impressive! I would just like to be walking again. After my "no exercise" period of recovery from mono, I'm far from running or swimming!