The 5K

Runners unite!

My very first competitive run is in two days! At 8am on Saturday morning I will be lined up with complete strangers, awaiting the start of a 5K. I’m pretty excited about the whole thing.

Back track, I must confess: this is not my first “competitive run.” Now that I think about it, I ran track in High School. To clarify: I ran one track event in High School. I went to a private school, and we didn’t have much to offer in the world of sports. In my freshman year, I remember being on the track team. Why? No clue. The result? I busted my shoulder…

It was one of those short races—the 500 meter or something. I was doing my thing, running as hard as I could. When I reached the end of the race, despite every important thing related to running that I had forgotten, I recalled that I should stick my neck out, which I proceeded to do. As I crossed the finish line in all of my awkward stretched-neck’d glory, I lost my balance and went down…hard. Luckily I had the sense of mind to turn my face away from that awful turf and thus allowed my shoulder to take the brunt of the crash. Blood, blood, blood. I never returned to that track team. But hey, I can at least say that I ran track in High School. Can you?

Perhaps a deep-seated fear or psychologically-related traumatic episode…thing is the reason why today I hate running. Regardless, I decided to get over it and joined a 5K to force myself to do just that. Fast forward two and a half weeks and here we are: two days out. I hope/plan to do well. I enjoy meeting goals. I really enjoy surpassing them. I ran a practice 5K on Tuesday morning and had a shorter time than my practice 5K from the previous Saturday. Keep this up and who knows, maybe I could be the Flash’s side-kick.

Let’s talk about that for a minute. Nearly every superhero out there has a name that can be manipulated in some way in order for a side-kick to ride his/her success. E.g., Superman has Superboy and Supergirl, Batman has Batgirl, Aquaman has Aqualad, etc., but what about Flash? Flash boy? Boy Flash? Zip? Kid Zoom? Lame. All lame.

So, yeah. I'm running my first 5K in two days. 

Hey, want some advice on running for weight loss? Too bad, because I’m giving it. If you think it’s beneficial to always beat your butt and sweat buckets while you run, you’re wrong. While it feels great, your body is most likely dipping into its muscles to look for the energy needed to sustain that intense cardio. This is counter-productive, people. Your muscles need development in order to allow your body to develop into a fat-burning machine. This doesn’t mean you need to be a massive body builder. It simply means you need to do strength training and primarily run with your heart rate resting in the fat burning zone.

The fat burning zone is a lower intensity that, when maintained over a longer period of time, will allow your body to look to its fat source for energy. This isn’t to say that high intensity cardio doesn’t have its place. There’s a balance that is needed. High intensity will help you bust a lot of calories, specifically fat calories, but like I said, you could be using up your muscles in the process. Most people see how many calories they burned and figure that means they can eat more, which is a big problem.

So, pick your poison. You could burn more calories and play the mind game of “can I eat more since I burned so much” or burn less visible calories while targeting the fat % of your body.

*My workout advice: Do strength training and low intensity cardio several times a week, and do high intensity cardio only once or twice a week.

Cheers, and stay motivated

S