How I improved my running fitness over lock-down - Setting Goals & Making Them Happen

Goal setting is defined as the act of choosing a target you want to achieve. Pretty self explanatory and seems simple enough. But I think there is a much more useful way to start this thought process. Instead of beginning with your goal and the steps required to achieve this, you should think about your goal and what exactly you're willing to do to make it happen. Let's face it creating steps is pointless if they're too far out of reach. That's the real challenger here, not the end goal itself but the work to get there. Are you willing to do what it takes?

During lock-down I set myself a bunch of goals, one of which was to improve my cardiovascular fitness. When planning my action plan I thought about a few things. What exactly I wanted to achieve, how I planned to achieve this and what I was willing to change. Due to the circumstances at the time I figured improving my running fitness was the easiest route to take. Once I decided this the rest was easy, I ran a quarter marathon, roughly 11 kilometres, last June (which was nearly the death of me) so I thought the next sensible move was to build up to a half marathon or 22 kilometres roughly. Lastly I set out how many days I would run, what distance and pace I would practice each day, how I would alter my diet and most importantly how I would allow my body to recover.

So here’s some ways I set up my to achieve my goal and improved my cardiovascular fitness by running:

1. Endurance

I focused firstly on improving my mileage. Expanding your distance comes with a so many benefits. The main focus is the ability to maintain your anticipated pace for longer. This allows your body to use the oxygen it holds more efficiently and you to use your energy more effectively.

Another way to improve the efficiency of your runs is to increase your stride turnover. In order to do this, try run for about 30 seconds at your normal running rate. Then jog for a minute’s recovery and repeat 5-8 times. Each time try to increase your rate.

Make sure to add in some temp runs to your training programme. This I struggle with, I prefer to pop on my headphones and jog at a nice even pace until I get tired, or hungry let’s be honest. Tempo runs will assist the development of your anaerobic threshold, this is critical in improving your speed. I try to do one a week, often I do get lazy and cop out but I aim for one tempo run each week.

Similarly, introducing speed work will help too. I usually save these for my days at the gym. After my weight-training I’ll usually add a couple of treadmill sprints to finish off my workout. This way I can make time for the gym each week and work on my speed too!

2. Recovery

Rest is just as important to the training regime as practice. A lot of people take recovery for granted. You will only be able to train hard on days you intend to if you’ve sufficiently recovered your body beforehand. It can be difficult mentally to allow your body. Guaranteeing satisfactory recovery will come down to more than just lowering your distance and reducing your pace. You should try to train on different surfaces and ensure you are wearing appropriate shoes. On top of this, sleep is the most important too in your recovery toolbox, don’t allow your body to become sleep deprived!

Incorporating stretches is key to good recovery. I used to be the worst for stretching before or after workouts, wanting only to be done the minute the workout was finished. Inflexibility can lead to injury and believe it or not it can also obstruct your goals, hindering your pace and deterring from your mileage.

Now after every workout I try to stretch for 15-30 minutes, a bit over the top but I find it helps. The main areas I focus on are my hip flexors (I have awful trouble with these), my calves and my hamstrings. If you’re new to running, here’s some stretches that are recommended.

3. Fuel Your Body

Running long distance miles can leave you feeling famished. But the real struggle lies with what exactly you should be eating. For me, I tried to increase my carbohydrate and protein intake mainly. It’s vital to both consume enough protein to build your muscles, but also to take in the right amount of carbs to provide your body with enough energy on those challenging days.

I’ve also started snacking a lot more throughout the day. Healthy snacks provide your body with quick energy, my go-to snacks are peanut butter, fruit, nuts and rye-crispbread crackers. A lot of my snacks are high fats, as eating the right types of fats is significant for maintaining healthy joints. Overall I’ve succeeded in growing my intake of healthy, nutrient-rich foods, ensuring I hit my 5-a-day most days. When preparing my meals every day I now try to think about what my body needs more so than what I would like. Don’t get me wrong I try to cook meals I will enjoy, but with the knowledge of what I need to put into my body kept in mind.

4. Repetition

As with everything, the more you practice the better you will get. If you currently run 2-3 times a week maybe try up this to 3-4 times. Over lock-down I increased my runs from 2 a week to 5. Now that everything is back open as normal I’ve cut back again to roughly 3.

Next goal: Run a marathon

A marathon is 26.2 miles or 42.2 kilometres. To date my furthest run has been 22 kilometres, or a half marathon. I won’t lie, not one of these runs were easy. However, in just under 4 months I managed to increase my fitness enough to knock 11 minutes off of my 20km time, I can now finish 20km in 1 hour 31 minutes. This time last year I barely crossed the line of the quarter marathon alive. I thought it was the hardest thing I was ever going to do, it took me 1 hour and 4 minutes to do just 11 kilometres…If you consider how much your fitness can improve in such a short amount of time it’s insane. And while a full marathon seems miles away yet (literally), I’ve come such a long way on my fitness journey already that I really do think it’s possible.

I’ve found this really interesting training pace calculator from runnersworld to help. I like this because I wouldn’t have a running background at all, I swam a lot growing up and I can imagine the training concept is quite similar, but I wouldn’t really know where to start when training for a marathon. This calculate shows how fast you should run the various components of your training routine. It’s such a big help, especially paired with my Fitbit Versa 2 that notifies me on my pace each kilometre so I can adjust my speed accordingly.

I’m unsure yet of when I would like to do this, but I will definitely start pushing myself to run further and train better. I’m still within two minds to try train on my own, as I like my running time to myself, or whether I would be better to join and train with a group. At the moment, I’ve found some programmes online that seem worth trying out so fingers crossed it all goes to plan.