A few weeks ago, I finished my 4-month running improvement program which began in mid-January. It involved a 30-minute walk/run that initially consisted of a 1-minute run and a 4-minute walk repeated 6 times.  Gradually, over the 4-month period, the idea was to lengthen the time running and reduce the time walking such that, by the end of the 4-month period, it would be a non-stop 30-minute run.  I would also attempt to do all the running at a 10-minute/mile pace.  This was an ambitious plan and it was almost successful.

I managed to get up to six 5-minute runs at the 10-minute pace, but I couldn’t do them without a rest of between 15 and 30 seconds between each run.  Ultimately, I decided to decrease the pace to 10:30. I tried doing three successive (.319 mile) laps (at the soccer field where I run) at a 10:30 pace and it was doable (takes around 10 minutes) and I guesstimated that I might be able to continue at this pace for the full 30 minutes.  However, I didn’t have time to test this.  The reason was that, the very next day, May 13, I was scheduled to compete in a 5K race --- the Guthrie Gallop in Sayre, PA!

This was the first time I had run the entire 5K distance in over three years.  The last 5K race that I ran was sometime before Covid.  As you know, I’ve competed in a few 5K races in recent years, but I’ve always had to walk part of the distance.  This time around I was determined to run the entire thing again!  My plan was to aim at what I thought would be around a 10:30 pace.  I did close to this for the first mile but, after that, I could tell I was slowing down.  To make a long story short, I did manage to run the entire distance.  My time was 33:38 which I think corresponds to a 10:51 pace.  This is an improvement of around 2 minutes compared to my November 2022 time in the Norwich, NY, 5K Turkey Trot.  However, I still have a ways to go if I’m to achieve the goal of a 10 minute pace…

There were two of us in the 80 and over age group.  I was the oldest competitor in the race!  The other guy was 80 years old and he beat me well with a pace of 10:05.  He’s from the town (Sayre, PA) where the race took place and I knew from last year’s results that, if he ran again, I probably wouldn’t be able to beat him.  However, I hope I’ve given him something to worry about for next year’s race!
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My next 5K race is scheduled for July 4 in Cazenovia, NY.  I’ll post my results here shortly afterward.  My goal will once again be the 10:30 pace.  We’ll see what happens…
 

​You may have noticed a new tab in the website entitled “The K*I*S*S* Exerciser.”  Now that I’ve become an old fogey, I have pretty much stopped “pumping iron.”  Lifting weights, and any exercise wherein you quantitatively keep track of how strong (or weak!) you are, is no longer attractive to me.  Inevitably, as one ages, you become weaker.  I’d rather not be reminded of that fact at every workout!  So, in addition to providing a complete upper body and core workout, the exercisers I have designed and built, and that are now the main part of my almost daily upper body/core workouts, have the feature that they enable a person to exercise to his/her max but without providing a numerical indication of exactly what this max is.  This is all that’s really important.  Everyone should simply exercise to their max.  There is a lot of info on these exercisers in the “The K*I*S*S* Exerciser” tab.  It is even possible to download a report about these exercisers.