Training

Running in Circles

July 28, 2009
By Michelle Kempton

Google Map view of the boardwalk

5 weeks article-surgery I made the mistake of trying to run trails (with hills). A couple kilometres into the run I felt a pulsing in my abdomen and knew I had pushed myself too far. I paid big-time for overdoing it with swelling for 4-5 days. Since that day I promised myself that until my surgeon gives me the go-ahead that I will stay off the trails.

Living in hilly Nova Scotia, my only real option to run on a flat surface is the boardwalk. The only problem with this is it’s a big circle and gets a little boring after a couple laps. What’s funny is this used to be my old stomping grounds when I first started to run a year ago. Back then it was a challenge… now I sort of put my body on autopilot and run the laps without much effort… that is until today when I decided instead of running 1/2 kilometre intervals that I would do 5kms of 1 minute sprints (my trainer Devin Sherrington is smiling right now… I live to make him proud)!

I hadn’t run 1 minute sprints in quite a long time… at about 3kms into my run I honestly had to talk myself through the next 2 kms… that little voice said “you need this… keep going… don’t stop!” It has been a very long time that I had to talk myself through a run… I just kept focusing on pumping my arms as fast and as hard as I could… I knew (because Devin told me) that my legs would keep up to any speed my arms were going! To be honest… it felt fabulous to push myself again… but with that being said… I was glad when my 5kms of sprint intervals was over … so it’s obviously is just what I needed. Until the surgeon gives me the go ahead on running hills again… I’m running 1 minute sprints.