DESI GIRLS Summer 2015 - Week 2 - Midweek Chat‏

Girls, Today is National Running day. I hope you are keeping up with the schedule in the spreadsheet. I want to emphasize this program is not Magic. You cannot expect results if you are inconsistent with training or participate only in the long runs on Saturdays. It is a journey and every mile is equally important. I WANT TO SEE ALL OF YOU THIS SATURDAY MORNING unless you are on vacation. We will be running our first 5K this Saturday at 7 am sharp at Mile 0 of Red Trail in Busse Woods. An Orange DESI GIRLS flag will indicate where you need to turn back and return to the starting point (At 1.56 miles). 5K is a good foundation for the 10K, 15K, 20K an 13.1 that will be working towards in the next few weeks. So, give your best. Rule of thumb: If you are able to have a causal conversation with your friend while walking this Saturday, you are not giving your best. Stop talking and get moving. Make sure you stretch before/after your 5K and don't forget to time yourselves. Ultra Marathoner, Triathlete, Yoga Practitioner and a Desi Mom Vidhya Ravi from Palatine will be joining us on Saturday. Please interact with her before/after your 5K and get tips from her. She is very unassuming and modest but is a wealth of information. Unlike me who is just a Fitness Enthusiast, she is a trained professional. Let 's benefit from her experience. Let me conclude this edition with a very important concept. Take time to understand what it means and I can answer any questions you may have. Training to walk/jog/run a long distance is not a mindless activity done on auto-pilot. There are some proven techniques to help you get to a faster pace. Some of them are given below. TEMPO RUN: Tempo Workouts start with a warmup followed by a run at an effort that is just outside your comfort zone (you can hear your breathing, but you're not gasping for air. If you can talk easily, you’re not in the tempo zone, and if you can’t talk at all, you’re above the zone) followed by a cool down. Put it simply: Tempo Run: Warm up -> Run outside comfort zone -> Cool down. INTERVAL: Interval Workouts are short but intense runs followed by long recovery time. Run few minutes at a hard pace followed by slower pace so your breath becomes normal. Unlike Tempo run, your hard effort is OUTSIDE your comfort zone. At this zone, you are gasping for breath and can't wait to slow down. Put it simply: Interval: Short "Extremely hard" Pace -> Long "Catch your breath" pace FARTLEK: This funny sounding word is a Swedish term for "speed play," . Unlike tempo and interval work, fartlek is very unstructured. After an initial warm up, you keep mixing up speed by running faster for short period (to that tree, to the sign) followed by easy-effort running to recover. It is always fun to do it in a group when your group members have similar pace like you. You can take turns to identify the next target and push others to give their best until the target is reached. There are great mental benefits of being pushed by your buddies through an unpredictable workout. Keep it free-flowing and adjust the distance based on external conditions (like weather, incline, energy levels etc) Put it simply: Fartlek: Warm up -> Hard-> Easy-> Hard -> Easy and so on. I am a big fan of Fartlek. It took me two full years to transition from a walker to a runner. Fartleks played a major role. Without knowing that such a name and running style exists, I used to run to a specific point, jog some more, resume running for a while etc. One day I was pleasantly surprised that I had run the entire 2 miles without slowing down. Try fartleks this Saturday and give me your feedback. I know some of you benefited from it last running season. Funny quote of the day (if you made it this far) "-Why aren't you signed up for the 401K?" "-I'd never be able to run that far." -Scott Adams, Dilbert (4/2/01) Keep Moving. CHEERS

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