This has become an on-again-off-again post about Running in LoseIt.
All levels of runner are welcome here, from first timers to experienced marathoners. We welcome someone who just ran for the first time or is just starting couch to 5K (r/c25k) as eagerly as someone who has thousands of miles of experience.
This post is for sharing your weekly progress or excitement with running. From training you got in this last week, your first run, a virtual race, or a real race, we'd love to hear what you did. Got a running related NSV (non-scale victory), we'd love to hear. Have a question or need advice, we are here to help.
In addition to sharing your progress each week, I ramble on about some topic related to running. This week's topic - I am a very slow runner, but I'm still a runner.
Prologue: I am so sloooooowwww
Every once in a while someone will casually mention some workout or exercise they did and how they enjoy it, and I'll mention something like, "Yeah, I am into running. Love it."
"Oh yeah, what was your last run?"
"I did a 10K yesterday."
"Oh, 40-50 minutes?"
"Nah, close to 90 minutes."
"90 minutes!? I can walk that in 90 minutes."
I won't pretend to be fast. I could run faster, but I didn't. I ran slowly. I'm not going to win any race (except one against an older time I ran). But, every week I get out there and enjoy running. I'm a runner even at my speed.
Running is not just about speed. And no matter what speed you go, you can be a runner. No matter if you think it is jogging, or shuffling, or poking along, if it's just 50 feet or 2 minutes -- it's running.
Running for many people is about speed
Fitness is many things. It's not just cardio endurance and strength. It is power, speed, and flexibility. But it is more than that -- it is an incredible combination of these things that propels people to amazing levels of performance.
You can't pin down fitness to just one thing, one attribute. For instance, is a marathoner more fit than a mountain climber? IMO they are both incredibly fit and beyond amazing.
The comparison of different aspects of fitness can be fun. I am always amazed by what people are capable of and I find it inspiring. How about someone who can planche) compared to another who can do a jade split? Is there some objective measurement here that says one is more than fit than the other. Or one isn't as amazing? They are both fit AF and if you can do either of these moves you are badass.
Running contains contains multitudes just like all fitness. There's endurance, power, and an ability to suffer for 5K or 100K, 15 seconds or 24 hours. But for some if you aren't running fast then you aren't running. What about endurance, isn't that important to running? For some endurance is slow and not running. It's what you do when you can't run fast. But there's clearly more to it than this.
So which is more important, which is the real runner -- the fast runner or the endurance runner?
Endurance Running vs. Speed?
Going back to my comparison's on fitness, is an Olympic marathon winner less of a runner than a blazingly-fast 1500m Olympian? We saw them both Sunday at the New York City Marathon running neck-in-neck right to the finish. Peres Jepchirchir, the marathon gold winner in Japan, was the woman's winner in New York, she was followed closely behind by Olympic 1500m runner Viola Cheptoo who took second (ran a 4:06 1500m in 2016). They both, amazingly, ran 42km at about 5:27 per mile (3:23 per km).
I think they are both equally awe-inspiring runners.
Endurance can be taken even further than the marathon, though, and ultra-marathoners run distances longer than a marathons or multiple marathons over difficult terrain at amazing speeds. Some even run them having lost a leg. Wow.
The fast or the endurance runner -- there's no one true runner. Is anyone who can't do what the running divine do also runners? It doesn't work that way. We all know it. You need not be an elite runner to be a runner. You need not be a ultra-marathoner to run.
The Sprint Speed Vortex
Alas, there's further we can go down this rabbit hole. We could hold speed above all else. Distance isn't as important as raw light-bending speed of the short distance sprinters.
All the marathoners, all the ultra-runners, every winner of every race from 800m or longer -- they could be considered glacially slow! Why? Because of sprinting of course. And if they are you aren't as fast as 100m sprinters, aren't they clearly way slower? If they are slower, and speed = running, then clearly they are less of a runner. At speed do they cease to even be runners?
Think that sounds ludicrous? It is. Because there's no objective measurement even if you are comparing running speeds. That doesn't make one speed better or worse, more fit or less fit than another, one more of a runner or not a runner.
You simply can't make running be some objective number. You can't pin running down to just one thing. It isn't a particular speed. It isn't a particular distance. It isn't a number.
You are a runner
Running is many things. Speed or endurance, of all levels. Don't dwell on the speed you are going as some indication of your runner-ness. 12 minute miles? 8 minute kilometers? I'm slower than you - way slower. And I'm running.
Don't dwell on how far you can go or how long you can run either. If you are starting week one of C25K -- well that 1 minute in there, I see you, and you are running. Hi there fellow runner!
Epilogue: I Can Walk Faster than I Can Run (sometimes)
Funny thing about that 90 minute, "I can walk that fast," comment.
A couple years ago, I was recovering from a muscle pull and I had to walk a race. I do an annual series of seven 10K races put on by my local Portland Oregon running club. I had prepaid for the year -- so I decided to down grade to a walk. I did that 10K walking fast in ~88 minutes. Well, damn, if I'm not the one who can walk faster than my 10K.
Still, that 90 minute 10K run felt great.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/qpxx3d/running_with_loseit_1182021_slow_running_is_still/
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