YOU CAN RUN AGAIN!

If you are a BABY BOOMER, you have probably come to this stage of life lamenting that you will never run again.  That sucks.  You're stuck in the walking lane.  Doomed.  But, not so fast.  

Before I had kids, I could run.  I even ran in a few long distance races.  Just 10K-not the marathon.  In fact, once I got going, I got into excellent shape in a short period of time.

But for the past 25 years, I have walked thousands of miles.  On my third reading of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (yes I said third), I fantasized that one day I could walk endless miles with the hobbits.   I imagined that to walk on and on and on would be sublime.

Of course, I was only trying to convince myself that walking is the perfect exercise.  Bliss. Especially since I could only run a short distance without feeling like I was about to collapse, have a heart attack and die.

WALKING  HAS GREAT VALUE


Don't get me wrong.  Walking has great mental and physical value.  But, I have walked in my neighborhood, my sister's neighborhood, my mother's neighborhood, on the treadmill and on the track. The problem was that whenever I missed a few days or a season, I would have to start over.  Very demoralizing.  Plus the results were minimal and slow to come by.

INTERVAL TRAINING

Then I read an article about a clinical trial on interval training in the health section of the Washington Post.  The trial was comprised of two sets of out of shape women getting into better shape for their health.  What's not to like?  Half walked for an hour.  The other half interval trained for 20 minutes.  Not only did the 20 minute intervals have better results, but the training was something I could easily do.

Interval training consists of 20 minutes of walking with eight 30 second intervals of running spread over the 20 minutes.  So you start out walking to warm up and run for 30 seconds, then walk and run for 30 seconds until you have run eight times for 30 seconds.  That's two intervals every five minutes. Get it? Not only are the the short runs manageable, but you sweat like crazy and you feel like you've accomplished something.  In fact, you are.  YOU ARE RUNNING AGAIN!  HA HA HA! Plus you're not killing your knees.

The way it was explained is that the metabolism rate is sped up when you run and is maintained when you walk in between intervals.  So, the results are as if you had run most of the 20 minutes.  And you get better results faster.

Of course, build up to it if you have to.  Who can't squeeze in a 20 minute workout over having to walk for an hour?  Start out with two or four intervals and build to eight.  Walk until you get your breath and then run.  Once you've mastered the eight intervals, add more intervals.  Run longer.  Raise your incline.  You can do intervals on the treadmill, the street or the track.  Not a problem.

It  helps to have headphones and music-especially in the beginning.  I also use pennies to keep track of my intervals.  The beauty part is that if you miss days, it's easy to back on track.

Now this is bliss.  It's predicted that the boomers are going to be around for a while.  Let's do it with panache.

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