Thursday 18 November 2010

In The Darkness


Being away last week meant, among other things, that I really had to think about when I was taking my photos for the day and when I was getting in my exercise for the day.

I figured the easiest thing to do would be to go out for a quick walk in the morning and grab a few shots and then, if the day allowed, heading out for a longer walk in the evening.

It turned out that these morning walks were all the exercise I managed to get and that my shots for the day also came from that morning walk.

I also have found that I'm not a fan of running by myself in the cold and dark. A fair bit of that has to do with the fact that I'm out for an hour and that takes me far from my house. I have lights and it's not that I'm worried about not being seen, it's just out of my comfort zone. When I went for walks at the start of the year and it was dark it didn't bother me as much because I was just heading out and around the block. I suppose that means I could run around my house in big squares for an hour, but I think that might drive me mad.

Maybe I need to head indoors to a treadmill? My run clinic only goes for a couple more weeks (three?) and then I'm going to be all on my own. (At least until the next clinic I decide to join.) And I'm determined not to lose the fitness I've gained over these months. I also don't really want to stop running.

I think I'll ask my run leader if I can go for shorter runs twice as often. I think I wouldn't mind running, for say half an hour in the freezing dark, but an hour just feels too long. And it's not as if the run itself is enjoyable enough to make me dash out to complete it.

I know it's about a month til the days get lighter, but it feels like a month in, a month out, so I have two months to sort through this and find a system that works.

Here's hoping.

4 comments:

Dominic said...

I like running. I can happily go for an hour-long run in the cold & dark whilst being rained on.

But treadmills aren't running. They're godawful things. I start looking impatiently at the timer within about a minute of starting.

It's not that they're hard. They're just uncomfortable and massively boring.

Good luck with whatever you wind up doing!

Victoria said...

Yeah, we'll see how it goes!

Single and Picky said...

Okay so you can split your runs in theory. Depends what you are striving for. If it is overall cardio then go for it. If it is the ability to go for a certain time or distance then you should try and get in the full time.

That being said - I don't know what kind of schedule they have you on - but I would suggest trying the longer runs when you can and if you can't a run is better than nothing. I have had the same problem and I've opted to do two longer runs since I am training for a marathon and two medium runs with a day for yoga. Rather than trying to run 6 days a week.

Hope that helps

Victoria said...

I'm not sure what I'm striving for, probably cardio most of all. . . fitness. We've been running for time and increasing our time and all our runs have been the same time.

Good luck with the rest of your training! :)