farfromfearless
5-Mile Recovery Run (With My Son)
As I have mentioned recently, your children, if you’re fortunate enough to have some, quickly become interested in the things you do, especially if those things are a constant or mad enough to be taking place every day for nearly six weeks.
Both of my sons have expressed an interest in joining me on my runs. My youngest, bless him, suffers from quite bad asthma and while his heart is there and he’s a gutsy little soul, I can’t see him being able to manage it right now. I think down the line if he can get past his asthma he’ll turn out to be a tenacious little bugger. My eldest, however, while generally non-athletic, is very lean and fit-looking. He eats well and had enquired enough about coming along with me to suggest he had a genuine interest.
We talked about it today whilst out and about and decided that we’d run together this afternoon. My son is 12. Now, kids, as we know, appear to have near-limitless energy, particularly when it comes to endlessly doing something that is pushing the often quite sensitive buttons of their parents. Whatever that takes, they have in abundance (and then 10 extra per cent on reserve). However, there’s a big difference between that kind of energy and the stuff you need to be able to run many minutes in a row, certainly if you’ve never attempted it before. People often assume that running is easy, and technically it is - but running for distance is tough when you first start out. Once you reach the 10-minute mark, it can be quite a shock to the system.
And so it went. Even before our agreement I’d planned to have an easy, ‘recovery’ day today, especially after yesterday’s shenanigans. I hadn’t had a chance to recalibrate my Garmin and wasn’t sure how it was going to hold up, if at all. I didn’t like the idea of blasting out to another epic run only to be told that I was averaging something ridiculous like 3:45 miles. I’d spent a lot of time researching possible faults overnight and thanks to some good advice on the Runner’s World forums (UK) made a change that paid off. When I moved my Garmin footpod from my old shoes to my Sauconys yesterday, I’d actually placed it about an inch further down my tongue (connected in the laces) than before. This can, and clearly did make a difference, as the unit appeared to be functioning perfectly well today. I’d like to think I ran like a speed-demon yesterday, but as said - while I think I did run faster, it wasn’t quite that fast.
Ahead of my run today, however, I had no idea my Garmin was going to hold up so figured it would be good to have an easy day to give myself a chance to recover a bit. Once my son signed on the dotted line, that was essentially a given.
We opened around the 8:30 mark and held that for a little while. My son seemed okay, so I edged the pace up to 8:00, but pulled away from him quickly there and had to ease back. Things were okay until the first mile was done (8:29), but it wasn’t long after that that he started complaining about a stitch, and he resorted to walk/running the rest of the way. I told him to use a system of counting paces - 50 walks and then 50 runs - and he did that for most of the rest of the way.
Meantime, this presented me with a dilemma - I wasn’t going to stop running, but obviously wasn’t going to leave him by himself. What I had to do was run away from him for about a hundred yards or so, loop back around and then run past him for another hundred yards, and then repeat. This meant that over my 400 yard (or so) loop, he’d probably have advanced by about 150-200 yards or so each time. This obviously meant that even though I actually ended up completing less of my standard route, I actually ran the parts we did do multiple times.
I also maintained a very slow pace the entire way. I felt good and could easily have picked it up to 7:30 or so, but it would have been pointless as just a minute or two of that would have put me (and him) out of sight. So most of the time I kept it between 8:20 and 9:00, doing occasional intervals at the lower end, then kind of easing back off when I ran back towards him. This was effective and incredibly easy. While a couple of weeks ago I was shocked to find that I was averaging 8:26/mile on my runs, that pace today seemed not far off a quick walk. It felt really, really slow and was really, really easy as a result.
As I passed three miles, I realised that today was a great day to move up to the 40-minute mark. When I hit the 30 minute point, I suddenly really liked the idea of a five-mile run.
So, that’s what I did. Five slow miles, but five good ones. I felt great all the way around. Around the 4.25 mile mark, I realised I had a ton left in the tank, and sprinted the rest of the way, eventually peaking at around 7-mins/mile. It felt really good. It was nice to get that distance and length of workout in the bag, and to know that I had a fair bit of kick left in me at the end. When I was done, I realised that if I’d maintained my earlier average, I could easily have logged several more miles with no problem.
My average for the day ended up at 8:33. Slow, but that was the point. Physically and mentally I felt refreshed and recharged once the run was complete.
Splits and chart:
My Garmin software tracks my weeks from Sunday through Saturday. This week, I’ve logged 24.46 miles over 3:15:06, with an average pace of 7:58/mile, burning 3390 calories. This is an 18-second improvement over last week’s 8:16/mile.
My son ended up run/walking about three miles or so. After dinner, I asked him if he fancied coming for a run with me again sometime.
“Maybe,” he said, after a pause.
“Maybe”, of course, being child-speak for “I really don’t think so.” 
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