Hidee Ho
Ok, so maybe I'll get back into this blogging thing. Went to the gym again today for a 30 minute run and 13+3 on the elliptical. I normally don't go 2 days in a row, but I was feeling some extra energy and not too much soreness so whatever. Fortunately, my joints, muscles, and shins have improved to the point where I haven't been getting any trace of the old shin splints that were hurting me at the beginning for quite some time. I hit a high on the run 2 days ago with 22/6/2 run/walk/cooldown for 421 calories and about 2.6 miles. The long term goal was always something along the lines of the couch to 5K programs which is 3.1 miles in 30 minutes, or even 30 minutes of consecutive running at all. This has just started to seem realistic, as I can now maintain pretty damn well at 5.3 to 6.0 mph without getting winded, but the low end is much easier than the high end. I've seen a pretty steady, gradual progression and improvement over the last 10 weeks or so and if it continues at the current steady pace that would be effin sweet and I'd probably be lookin at hitting my goal in the next 4-6 weeks. Of course, you never know, what with diminishing returns and whatnot. Plus, I still haven't been able to weigh myself for shit at the gym and naturally all this would be drastically easier if I could manage to take off 20-30 El Beez. I also need to improve my diet quite a bit, but I can't complain at all, as this is definitely the best shape I've been in since I graduated from high school.
I was always a slowish runner and never had much endurance, but I was reading something last night that definitely seemed a bit much:
http://www.mhhe.com/catalogs/sem/hhp/faculty/labs/index.mhtml?file=/catalogs/sem/hhp/labs/cardiovascular/10
That outlines cardiovascular fitness test that certain groups use (certain states' state troopers for example) to make sure their membership maintains certain minimum benchmarks. And there are the tables with percentiles by age and gender, blablabla. Now, I haven't tried to do this exact test, but if these numbers are supposed to be for the entire population, I'm kind of skeptical. At a guess based on my current walk/runs, Id say that I could do maybe 1.2 miles in 12 minutes. According to this chart, that would put me barely above the 5 percentile mark. I know that's definitely not a good distance, but doesnt like 20 percent of the population smoke??
And probably another 15-20% is very overweight to obese? There's no waaaaay alot of those people could run for 12 minutes without walking. On a different site that had the same tables and numbers, though, there was a caveat that said only people who had been on a consistent running program for several months should try the test. So wtf? Are they getting these numbers from a broad overall sampling of the country or just from people who are on running programs? Of course, it's not really that important as it is interesting from an academic standpoint, but Im always kind of curious to know what the norms are for other people. I'd say easily 60-70% of the people I know don't exercise at all, so its hard to think that 50% of guys in their 20s could up and run a mile and a half in 12 minutes when many of them haven't run at all in months. If anybody ever actually happens to read this, I'd be interested to hear others opinions.
I was always a slowish runner and never had much endurance, but I was reading something last night that definitely seemed a bit much:
http://www.mhhe.com/catalogs/sem/hhp/faculty/labs/index.mhtml?file=/catalogs/sem/hhp/labs/cardiovascular/10
That outlines cardiovascular fitness test that certain groups use (certain states' state troopers for example) to make sure their membership maintains certain minimum benchmarks. And there are the tables with percentiles by age and gender, blablabla. Now, I haven't tried to do this exact test, but if these numbers are supposed to be for the entire population, I'm kind of skeptical. At a guess based on my current walk/runs, Id say that I could do maybe 1.2 miles in 12 minutes. According to this chart, that would put me barely above the 5 percentile mark. I know that's definitely not a good distance, but doesnt like 20 percent of the population smoke??
And probably another 15-20% is very overweight to obese? There's no waaaaay alot of those people could run for 12 minutes without walking. On a different site that had the same tables and numbers, though, there was a caveat that said only people who had been on a consistent running program for several months should try the test. So wtf? Are they getting these numbers from a broad overall sampling of the country or just from people who are on running programs? Of course, it's not really that important as it is interesting from an academic standpoint, but Im always kind of curious to know what the norms are for other people. I'd say easily 60-70% of the people I know don't exercise at all, so its hard to think that 50% of guys in their 20s could up and run a mile and a half in 12 minutes when many of them haven't run at all in months. If anybody ever actually happens to read this, I'd be interested to hear others opinions.
posted by GimmeDaWatch at 9:34 PM
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