My first real 10k run of the 21st century

This was a real accomplishment for me and one that I am particularly happy about. This is the only continuous 10k that I have completed without stopping or slowing down since the turn of the millennia.

I played a lot of sports as a kid and a teen but just running wasn't one of them. I could run 10 km's back then but I don't recall ever doing one outside of some March of Dimes charity thing that I did and I walked that.

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Here is something else of note: it has gotten very cold here but at least for now, not so cold that I am going to complain about it. I am a sweat-oriented person and even though I was chilly, I still got wet with sweat by the time I was done. I suppose this could be considered dangerous if I was to stop moving and slow down while I had a bunch of moisture on my clothes because it would start to feel very cold very fast in this windy city of mine. I guess this is just a strong motivator to keep moving.

I don't expect anyone to be impressed by these stats but I am. We need to keep in mind that as little as a couple of years ago, I was incapable of comfortably running 1km, let alone 10 of them in a row. I was never lazy, but my focus for most of my adult life was on strength training and bodybuilding. I did almost zero cardio in that time. Lately, I have stepped away from aesthetics and been focusing more on health, primarily cardiovascular health. It's pretty rewarding when you start to notice that your endurance has improved dramatically and mine has.

While my pace ended up being somewhat consistent throughout the entire run, I wasn't focusing on that. Instead I was trying a new technique that I had read about where I barely allow myself to enter the 4th heart rate stage (out of 5 stages) and keep it there or at the upper end of the 3rd. I didn't focus on how fast I was moving... only my heart rate. This has improved for me a great deal over the past year as well, and this was kind of the point. I am no longer uncomfortable in my heart rate or my breathing. Both of these were under control the entire time.

You can see here that I managed to maintain a pretty consistent pace. I don't know what happened in km 3, maybe there was a pretty girl nearby or something.

Now here is something I have noticed about finishing this run. I wasn't gassed out. I had plenty of energy left and felt like I could do more but there was a problem with muscle fatigue. My legs were starting to not respond like I wanted them to. I'm actually ok with this, because I feel like this is something that I can improve with time and stretching and that is what I am going to focus on next. After years of bodybuilding I don't find muscle improvement difficult but this is a whole different kind of training for me and I may have to approach it differently.

One thing that has definitely helped for me as far as endurance training is concerned was I have been focused not on speed but on duration. You may recall that I was talking about how it doesn't matter how fast you do a certain distance, it just matters how far the distance is. I had been getting around 400 calories burn per 5k regardless of how fast I ran it and you can see that is the case with this 10k as well.

I read somewhere the endurance rule of 80/20 meaning that 80% of the time you are training in a low heart rate zone and 20% of the time you are pushing the upper limit. Is this true? Well, it appears to be because now 5k runs are not even something I consider remotely difficult anymore. They are child's play.

I suppose my next objective will be for a 10k to feel like child's play, then 15, then a half marathon and so on and so forth.