I honestly couldn’t say why that is. I’ve no idea how and why my times are improving as they are. I dont really feel much improvement during the run at all,certainly not on last nights run anyway. Covid is certainly a possibility.
My current target is get sub 13 stone by Saturday 26th Feb. I’m off on holiday (snowboarding) then and want to be in that sub 13 stone category for that.
Thats due to muscle memory and weight loss. There is a correlation there…
I was doing the previous times when i was weighing around 82kg. (Just checked my historical data on google fit. My weight now is 85.
Probably this is the body telling me that i need to decrease weight in order to get better times.
Either that or its covid. I just seem to run out of breath more faster when i try to increase my speed now.
Sounds like it is Covid but not helped by the extra lbs.
I’d like to (somehow, someday) build a good power to weight ratio. I have huge admiration for athletes that have this such as climbers, gymnasts etc.
Some added flexibility wouldn’t go amiss either.
If you want to reduce your times, you need to vary what you are doing. Right now, you are training your body to run 4km in about half an hour. Over time, it will improve marginally, but with simple repetition gains will be slow. You are actually more likely to just find it easier to do the same - which does correlate to some additional capacity, but not really pace.
Try mixing in fartlek workouts, shorter runs at a higher pace, hill work, and some longer but slower runs. Long slow will build out your endurance capacity, so not really your focus, but it will help overall performance. Hills strengthen your legs. Fartlek (doing intervals of a higher pace during a slower run of a given distance) does a lot for your pace capability. Doing 1-2 km runs at the target pace you want pushes you in a different way than the simple repetition, say do a 1km in perhaps 6 minutes, then each week add to that distance. With a solid base for your 4km pace right now, I think you could expect noticeable gains as quickly as 2-3 weeks.
Covid is a wild card. A friend in Montreal had his VO2max into the mid-50s when he got covid in Fall 2020, when he felt well enough to begin training again he was in the 30s. By the end of last summer he had moved it back into the mid-40s, but was grappling with the realization that between age (44) and covid, he would likely never be capable of what he was capable of before.
I think medical science is really at the very beginning of understanding the full effects of covid on performance characteristics such as these, whether or not full recovery is impossible, or just long and hard.
Will try this out. I guess ive just gotten my body used to this and tried for incremental gains which doesnt seem to be working. Let me start going for a 0.5 to 1 km higher pace.
Look around for some training plans that show the basic pattern - here is one example, the ones I was looking for are now pay-walled. This one is short-term and for 10k, but the same ideas are there.
I did my second full-90 match last Friday out of necessity, and I gotta say that I’ve noticed a distinct drop in lung capacity since Covid two years ago. no way that I can run the same as I did then and am only carry an extra 5lb around. the two years in age don’t make much of a difference at this point (45 vs 47) but I just cannot get by breath back after a sprint as quickly anymore.
Maybe take your corset off before putting on your kit might resolve that issue for ya… :0)
I dont want to dismiss covid as a possibility but I would certainly say that the last 2 years has really impacted people’s ability or even willingness to simply go out and be active. Certainly from my perspective. It’s taken quite an effort for me to get out and go running and i still haven’t quite cracked the mentality of doing it while working from home.
Yeah, I am not looking forward to the start of run training this Spring. I have been working my weight back down to 100kg, and I am not too far off that now. The last serious running I did was in October, a half-marathon, and I really struggled to get into that smooth, steady pace where I really enjoy running. It felt like I was fighting to hold a pace virtually the entire time. I have not had covid afaik, but the weight gain has definitely not been ‘good weight’ and has been accompanied by not much in the way of cardio, certainly not intense. I have been guarding my knee since before Christmas, so I haven’t done my usual crosscountry skiing (that, and January was goddamn cold this year). April is going to be a tough transition.
My motivation to train for virtual events is so poor. I have been doing them, so my event calendar looks about the same, but I just don’t prepare for them with the same focus - hence the dire 23km in October, I just wasn’t really ready for it.
my footy team is pretty hardcore, we took a few months off here/there but we play all year round. Tues nights we scrimmage for an hour then league matches on weekends. Summer we train almost straight through, some of the team play a summer league as well but I’m doing other sports that time of year.
Even during covid, we were only shut down for a few months at the longest and some guys still went out to kick a ball around.
I had the same, not that I was running that much before covid more five aside once a week and racking up some miles on the road biike.
However since my wife went back to work after our second child in September I’ve found the perfect window for me with the flexibility I have with working from home. Two days a week I start earlier and then have an extended lunch break where I can get a good 45 minute run in and still have time to shower and change before getting stuck back in. On Fridays im fortunate enough to finish early anyway so squeeze another one in before the family get home.
Reduces the feeling of leaving the kids with the wife and makes work fit around regular sessions rather than trying to fit them in around everything else. Has taken me 18 months of lockdown to work this routine out though.
right?
Ha…Ok should have elaborated a touch more…
A lot of the older guys in our senior squad still playing into their 40’s early 50’s… used to wear one during the games… apparently it used to protect their backs from slipped discs, strains or if they landed badly… they seemed to do the trick apart from making it difficult for the guys to breathe sometimes… I personally used to think it was the 3 or 4 lunchtime pints they had before a game that made it difficult for them to breathe… :0)
all good
before the pandemic, my squad was in an over-45’s league here. oldest guy we had was 57, most were early 50’s.
when the league shuffles happened (team attrition), the O-45’s were scuppered in favor of a “master’s” group of divisions of over 35’s. as we live quite far east in the city we decided to stick it out this year instead of moving to the metro vancouver league which has 32 teams in their over-45’s divisions ranging from Premier to Div3.
It’s been a tough season, we’re clinging to 2nd place by the skin of our teeth but the #1 team just spanked us 5-1 away.
If I’m feeling a niggle in my hip flexor which is the one long-term sore spot I cannot shake, I’ll wear compression shorts which put a bit of squeeze in it. But I don’t wear them unless I feel it tighten up during warm up. I hate playing on turf, we got moved from grass about 3 years ago. play is consistent and we have one of the better fields but it still nothing like grass.
It’s commonly misunderstood, but the performance of the lungs rarely plays a role cardio. You typically need some substantial damage before that becomes the performance limitation. It’s possible a bad case of covid could have caused it, but with all associated inflammatory and vascular issues we’ve seen covid cause, that seems a far more likely culprit to me for any sustained reduction in performance once you’re otherwise “recovered”.
This pretty much dominates a lot of what I eat etc. Trying my hardest to keep any inflammation to a minimum.
sure.
