Staying motivated in a long-term running program

As with any endeavour that is worthwhile, it takes a degree of dedication and a long-term outlook in order to start reaping benefits from heart rate monitor training.

There is a dual edged sword when it comes to running and any form of cardiovascular activity:

• It takes time to build up a good degree of cardiovascular fitness; and

• The fitness is lost very quickly during periods of complete inactivity

During training, you can measure your progress and tell how well you are doing.  Fitness gains tend to be pretty linear. You put the work in and you reap the rewards, slowly but surely you will improve and get fitter. There are no exceptions and this can be highly motivating if you approach it the right way.

The downside is that this fitness is lost at a much faster rate than it is gained.  It only takes two to three months to lose all of your fitness gains if you do no physical activity in that time. This is a horrible fact, and it can be very de-motivating. What has taken ages to build, is knocked down very rapidly. I’ve heard some people use this as an excuse to never even start taking up activity, among many other excuses. Well, that’s a different matter to the one I wish to discuss in this short series of articles. Instead, I want to talk to those people who have been exercising for a number of months or years and have no doubt about the benefits that regular exercise brings.

There are times where the motivation to continue training will suffer a blow. It likely happens to everybody in just about any activity that is continued over a long period of time, no matter how enjoyable they find that activity. It could be monotony with the routine itself, or it could be caused by outside factors beyond our control.

To get good at anything, we have to practice it repeatedly and diligently. Familiarity breeds contempt, and so the sheer repetitiveness can cause a level of boredom. In a nutshell, what started out as fun becomes a chore. Fortunately, there are a number of things we can do to prevent this from happening, or to regain our lost enthusiasm.

Common examples of things happening outside of our direct control are illness and injury. We only have limited control over these, by taking care of ourselves and avoiding over-training. However, we cannot prevent these from happening entirely. Then we see out fitness affected and suddenly we can become de-motivated from continuing with the routine.

I recently had a lay-off from running due to an injury and I was chomping at the bit to get running again – I couldn’t wait, but knew that I had to. Then, when had fully recovered and restarted training, my motivation soon suffered. This was at the time when I realised how much fitness I had lost and thought about how long it would take to simply regain the fitness to the point before the injury struck. I had already missed a much-anticipated race while injured, and now a future race was also in jeopardy. Since the fitness gains are very linear, there is a real limit as to how quickly the gains can come – and it wasn’t going to be quick enough to make improvements in my racing performance. I knew that any attempt to speed up matters by training harder or faster can easily result in further illness or injury. So, even though I enjoy the activity, suddenly it felt like a chore because I was having to repeat the same training that I had done months beforehand.  I found myself procrastinating about some runs that, ordinarily, I would be performing enthusiastically.  I found excuses to be doing things other than running.  Things that I didn’t enjoy anywhere near as much as running!

In my next article, I will discuss some of the techniques I use to regain lost motivation and stay motivated over the long-term.

Technorati Tags: cardiovascular, heart, Illness, injury, monitor, motivate, motivation, program, rate, Running, training

I have suffered from headaches of varying severity throughout my life. The worst ones were the real blinding migraines accompanied by tunnel vision, bright auras and nausea. I’ve put these down to a number of different factors.

I noticed, for example, that changes in environment (such as moving office workspace location at work) seemed to trigger some of the worst attacks over a period of a few weeks. I mitigated this by trying to be as near as possible to natural light wherever I was moved.

Not surprisingly, I have always considered alcohol to be the major contributor to many of my headaches. However, they continued for a period after I quit drinking alcohol, albeit to a lesser extent. After researching why this could be, I tried eliminating drinks that contained the chemical Aspartame. It was at this point that my headaches stopped almost entirely! Needless to say, I was convinced that Aspartame was a large contributory factor.

Since then, and for the last few years I have suffered very few headaches, and no blinding migraines at all. So it appeared to me that all of my conclusions were correct – until recently.

Around three months ago I started getting headaches again – two or three days each week. The migraines were starting to reappear too. On the scale of things, the migraines were relatively mild, but they were increasing in severity and still incapacitated me for a couple of hours. I visited my family doctor for blood tests, but he could subsequently offer little help beyond what I had heard in the past.

Then the penny dropped.

The recent spell of headaches had commenced at roughly the same time that I had stopped running and was no longer taking part in any form of physical activity. Could it be that a lack of exercise was the cause of the headaches? Even my partner commented that it may not be pure coincidence. Thinking back to the time when I began avoiding drinks containing Aspartame, it was also the same time that I began exercising! For sure, I have subsequently consumed drinks containing the chemical from time to time with no noticeable adverse effect relating to headaches (notwithstanding the possibility of other health detriment – I do still try to avoid artificial sweeteners).

Just under three weeks ago I resumed running and have continued with the activity for four days each week. Since then I haven’t suffered a single headache – not even a mild one! Needless to say, I am utterly convinced now that there is a link between an inactive lifestyle and headaches. Previously, I had never heard of the possibility that such an association existed. Surely there must be some sort of research into this phenomenon? Well, yes there is.

A study was published as recently as November/December 2008 in “Headache” entitled “Socio-Economic Factors, Lifestyle, and Headache Disorders – A Population-Based Study in Sweden”. The study was based on 43,770 respondents to a postal survey questionnaire to look for factors associated with recurrent headaches and migraines. In the results and conclusion they state

“Physically inactive subjects were more likely to suffer from headache disorders than physically active subjects.”

“Of lifestyle factors, physical inactivity was strongly associated with headache disorders independent of economic and psychosocial factors.”

This is a complete revelation to me, and I find it one of the most exciting pieces of news that I have found. There is nothing more frustrating than to suffer severe recurrent headaches that are beyond your control. However, I firmly believe that I now have some control and have it within my power to prevent my life being blighted by migraine.

If ever there was a reason to take up some form of physical activity and make it part of your lifestyle, then this has to be up there with the best. I hope you will join me in taking control of your life. I have tips, advice and a training diary to show you how I implement heart rate monitor training into a structured running program, so that you can try it for yourself. You can find my articles on the Women’s Heart Rate Monitor blog. And before you ask….. yes it’s okay for men to follow the methods too!

Technorati Tags: cure, headache, Heart Rate Monitor, migraine, natural, prevent, remedy, Running, Womens Heart Rate Monitor

If you have been following my recent diary entries for Women’s Heart Rate Monitor, you will have seen that I recently caught a cold and continued with my training program. You may have wondered if this was a wise thing to do. So let’s take a look at some of the advice that I follow (most of the time – I’m not perfect).

The good news for people that take moderate exercise each day is that studies have found that this appears to minimize illness. Moderate exercise is generally taken to be around thirty minutes per day, and seems to be the most often quoted figure. Anecdotally, many people who exercise regularly feel that they get less illness in general, and recover quicker when they do get ill.

However, it should be borne in mind that harder and longer exercise can make it more likely that you may contract a cold, particularly if you make a sudden increase in your mileage or intensity to a level that your body is not used to. You should use your heart rate monitor to ensure that you do not over-train and that you balance hard training with rest and recovery. Following a long, hard run (e.g. in the latter stages of marathon training) it is best to avoid people that have colds, because the immune system may be suppressed for up to eight hours following the run.

Given that exercise may minimize the likelihood of contracting a cold – it still doesn’t eliminate the risk. The fact is that most of us will suffer some form of cold or respiratory illness in a given year, no matter what precautions we may take. People who run regularly are least likely to want to stop when illness strikes. If a race is looming, many may be tempted to continue training when really they should be resting and allowing their immune system to work at its most efficient.

Now, when the inevitable does happen and you contract a cold or flu, what should you do? Well, for a genuine flu, the simple answer is that you should rest – and frankly you will be unable to do anything else. However, a common cold may not necessarily mean that you need to skip training. The generally accepted rule is that it is okay to run if your cold symptoms are confined above the neck. So, if you have a runny nose, sore throat, mild headache and sneezing, you may run if you want to. Use your heart rate monitor to gauge how fast you should be running. I have found that my heart rate is persistently higher when I have a cold (by as much as ten beats per minute!), which means that I must run slower than usual to achieve my goal for the run.

Regardless of your planned running intensity for the session, you should start out easy to assess how you feel. Don’t ignore signals such as increasing pain in the head, as it would be better to abort the run and get some rest. Personally, I will generally avoid high-intensity training for a day or two if I believe that I can shake-off the cold quicker. Nonetheless, I have made the mistake of continuing on a long run when a cold was waning, only to have it come back with a vengeance.

If the symptoms of your cold are below the neck – such as a deep hacking cough, vomiting, aching muscles, diarrhoea – then you really should not run. It is far better to rest and recover from the illness, rather than run and prolong the illness or even make it worse. There is no rule that says you have to play Russian-Roulette with your life in order to stick to a training schedule. Remind yourself why it is that you are doing this activity in the first place. On your list of reasons, I’ll venture that “so that I can suffer longer and more frequent illness” is not in the top ten.

Unfortunately, it’s true that you will lose endurance very quickly during illness, and the comeback can be quite slow to start with. The danger is that you may throw yourself into hard training too soon, possibly causing a relapse. My advice is to start back with a recovery run, rather than trying to catch-up by recommencing with a hard run. During the run you will almost certainly find yourself running slower at your recovery ceiling. Depending on how severe and prolonged your illness was, you may need to have extra rest days and steer-clear of hard runs for a while. Build up gradually until you are back to full strength. You should find yourself naturally running faster again during each run at the same level of effort. If improvements do not occur, then consider having extra rest. If you missed a week of training due to illness, then you should expect to spend a week or two to build-up to the pre-illness level. I personally find that I need twice as long as the length of training absence in order to fully recover (i.e. two weeks build-up for one week missed training).

Another good use of your heart rate monitor is to take your resting heart rate regularly. When you know your normal resting rate, you will be able to see whether your current resting heart rate is significantly above this level. This can be a useful indicator of illness or over-training.

In summary, if your cold symptoms are above the neck it is okay for your training to proceed with caution. Use your heart rate monitor to check how you are responding to training and adjust your intensity level accordingly. Following an illness, give yourself time to get-back to your pre-illness level. You have a lifetime of running ahead of you – a few days or weeks of rest is a good thing and not something that should be avoided at any cost.

Technorati Tags: Cold, Flu, Heart Rate Monitor, Illness, Recovery, Run, Running, Womens Heart Rate Monitor