Jakob Østergaard Hegelund

Tech stuff of all kinds

Running - the beginning

2012-02-11

I have been biking a lot the past few years, but I have not been running much. In fact, I have almost not been running at all. Because of the biking, I'm in reasonably good shape (resting heart rate in the 40s, body fat below 15% and so on) but I just cannot run. My legs just won't do it. It hurts, especially the days after a run. So, I decided to go ahead and start running regularly.

In order to fit everything into a tight schedule, what I can do is, that I can make two weekly runs - one in the morning and one in the evening, on a single day of the week. The run will be 8.4km in each direction (to and from work). That's it. Clearly, running twice a day on a single day of the week is not going to be an optimal training schedule by any stretch of imagination, but this is that I have to work with.

The reason for this post, is the rapid change I experienced over the first four weeks (four times two runs). I have put some key numbers in the table below.

RunAvg moving paceEfficiencyAvg. HRPain following
1A5:06 [min/km]13.1 [m/kC]161 [bpm]-
1B5:26 [min/km]12.7 [m/kC]159 [bpm]Severe leg pain for 4 days
2A4:51 [min/km]13.5 [m/kC]161 [bpm]-
2B5:10 [min/km]13.1 [m/kC]154 [bpm]Some leg pain for 4 days
3A4:44 [min/km]13.9 [m/kC]162 [bpm]-
3B4:56 [min/km]13.8 [m/kC]157 [bpm]Only slight soreness for a day
4A4:34 [min/km](N/A)(N/A)-
4B4:43 [min/km]14.7 [m/kC]158 [bpm]Nothing
On all morning runs except the first, I carried 750ml of High5 4:1 (carbohydrate and protein) drink which I finished upon reaching the destination. On evening runs, I carried 750ml of plain water but drank 500ml of High5 protein recovery drink upon reaching the destination.

Personally I was very surprised to see the numbers change this much over just four training days (two sessions a day, one day a week, for four weeks). Due to illness I have had to skip two weeks, so it will be interesting to see how much damage that did, and how the numbers will progress from there. I would expect the average pace to stabilize first, and see the energy efficiency continue to grow further. I am curious by the way - what energy efficiency do you have as an experienced runner?