The old made new

Something new for me today, well actually, not really new, but it has been so long since I have done it that it might as well have been a new activity.

I went running!!!

To be honest I am not sure you could call it running, or even really jogging. Perhaps painful perambulation might be more accurate. Definitely more than walking, but not necessarily much more.

By my count this is probably my first run in at least 4 months, quite possibly 5 months. Given the length of the break I was not unrealistic with my goals, setting a target of 20 minutes. However, once I got going it felt good enough that I decided to stretch it to 30 minutes. While I survived the full 30, I suspect it was about as much as I had, by the end of 30 minutes I was happy to be stopping. An average speed of 5 min 30 was hardly rocket speed, but I will take it for now.

So why the return to running?

Well partly because I can. With Dr Stobie last week giving me permission to do a bit more exercise I thought I would take the chance to do a bit more jogging. There is no real intention to my running at the moment, I am more doing it because it is a good form of cross training and because I like being able to run. I find it frustrating to get out of breath if I need to run down the road for some reason and so it is a form of fitness that I find useful to have.

The other reason for my running is that it is a great way of losing weight. Since stopping training back in August I have been very conscious of trying to keep my weight under control, but it hasn't been easy. At the moment I am about 10kg heavier than I was when I originally eased back on training back in February this year. I am about 13kg over what used to be my race weight. Whilst race weight might be a little extreme (and perhaps a little bit unhealthy) I suspect gaining 13kg isn't that great either.

I have been working to control my weight with dietary modifications, but to be honest I am not very good at that and so I haven't been very successful. I just seem to like eating to much and while I have intentions of eating less, I just find that I snack a lot. What I am eating is generally healthy, but it is the quantity that I struggle to reduce. I guess years of being able to eat as much as I want has made it hard to break the habits and cut back.

While I continue to work on my diet, the most effective way I have found for me to regulate weight is through exercise. Combined with healthy eating it usually keeps the weight to sensible levels. Of the various forms of exercise I have done, I have found nothing gets rid of unwanted kilos like running. All exercise improves fitness, but running just seems to be great at shedding the body fat too. I figure if I am doing a bit more exercise I might as well kill two birds with one stone.

Early days at the moment, but I am hopeful that I will be able to continue jogging and perhaps even do a bit of proper running if I continue to rebuild some fitness. My intention is still to do a fair bit of paddling as well as some riding during coaching, but if all goes to plan then running will become a regular feature in my weekly exercise routine.