Runs again please

As a young rugby player, there really can't be anything more important than being able to run. Jog around the park for 80 minutes with intermittent sprints and you're going to need a decent running base to get through the game. Throw in a love of football, a spot of squash and it would be fair to say that I spent most of my young life running in one form or another, so once I finally retired from rugby it was a no brainer to keep on running and I have to say I really enjoyed just getting out and plodding around the streets and parks. I enjoyed many 5km and 10 km events. I even completed the Edinburgh marathon in 2006 and subsequent Glasgow half-marathons for a few years, although to be fair, you really need to put a bit of effort into training for those longer events to enjoy them and the arrival of our wee family made that more difficult. But still up until last year, pulling on the trainers and getting out for a run of anything up to 12km was pretty easy and probably something I did at least once per week until my 'event'.
I haven't run a single step since November 2018, when it started to become apparent something was wrong. I've done a lot of walking, I've been on the cardio X-trainer in the gym for a gentle stretch of the limbs and I've now been on the turbo trainer for a couple of weeks building up some lung capacity, but I haven't run.... until this morning.... Jesus suffering Christ, running is hard work! Managed a 20 minute light jog, stopped on 20 and walked home - which coincidentally also took 20 minutes. What a pleasure to get that cold morning air into the lungs again. But there's a whole load of pain in the post I think. Getting some running back might be quite a challenge, but in lockdown, getting out the house early for a wee plod a couple of times per week might just be the ticket.

Lockdown Turbo

Used to joke about outliving my old man, who screeched into an early grave at 53 having modelled his lifestyle on Ronnie Wood and Ozzy Osbourne, but without the fruit, or whatever it is that keeps those guys alive. It's starting to look like my free scoring run rate of the mid 20s through to mid 40's has slowed right down though as I've seen the half-century looming up though and this virus has me absolutely shitting myself. I've no real idea where my lungs and heart are in relation to the rest of the population. Up until mid 2018, I would have said I was a pretty fit guy, able to comfortably run 10km and train for longer endurance events without too much bother. Now, I haven't had any exercise that's stressed me for over 18 months. I'm still carting around weight that I shouldn't - whilst it never actually bothered me before now, it's become apparent to me that I've lost the underlying muscle tone that allowed that.

Anyway, here I am, stuck in Lockdown and it's not great, but actually last year has prepared me well for this and patience is the key to getting through it having achieved something. We've been having daily walks, the apple health app has been warning me that my VO2 max has been sliding, although my resting Heart rate seems to yoyo between 60-70. I've found that actually as my underlying fitness is so low, I actually get tremendous benefit in very short time from just adding a bit more exercise into the mix, so I've put my bike onto a turbo trainer in the greenhouse and am aiming to build up the number and length of sessions over the next few months. Being a geek for the numbers, I've used the Heart rate calculator on this page target Heart rate Calculator to calculate my training zones. As I'm getting back on the bike after a lay off, my plans are to mainly do steady state sessions for the first couple of weeks and probably make the majority of my time in Zone 2, with just a few forays into zone 3.

I've got a Garmin speed / cadence sensor fitted to the bike and an EDGE 500 speedometer, so everything I need to keep an eye on things.

The free version of Strava even facilitates some Heart rate analysis, so a session looks like this.

The distance things is a bit misleading of course. On the turbo, there is constant friction on the wheel, making it much harder than being on the road and stopping peddling sees the rear wheel stop spinning within 1 revolution. It's only useful to compare the distance travelled between turbo sessions rather than a real distance

Relative effort is a Strava term, the definition which they give is

Relative Effort

Relative Effort is an analysis of your heart rate data. By tracking your heart rate through your workout and its level relative to your maximum heart rate, we attach a value to show exactly how hard you worked. The more time you spend going full gas and the longer your activity, the higher the score. Compare your Relative Effort with friends and pros, see if you can do a truly epic workout and motivate yourself to push that extra bit harder! Relative Effort was inspired by the concept of TRIMP (TRaining IMPulse) coined by Dr. Eric Bannister.

I'll probably track that too...

So far I've done 3 sessions a week for 2 weeks and I'm not feeling too bad.

Week 3 plan
4 steady state sessions with 1 harder than the others in mid week.
Warmup : 10 mins, spinning up through the gears
Session : Steadystate - Zone 2/3 for 30 mins (x2 sessions in zone 2 x2 sessions on zone 3.
Warm down - 10 mins dropping through gears