Easing In and Out of Training

Yesterday was one awesome day.  I met up with two other people from the Knoxville Track Club's Tuesday Workout group, and we went out for a nice 10 miler.  In the beginning, we eased into a good pace, and at the end, we eased out of that faster pace until we reached the finish line.  I had a great time.  It wasn't a race pace so we didn't work too hard, but still, the average was pretty good.  According to the app, we ran approximately 10.23 miles in 1:15:13, an average of 7:21 min/mile.  With the easing into and out of the run, we probably worked about 8 miles at about a 7 min pace.

It's important to ease into and out of runs because in doing so, you warm up your muscles so that they aren't overstretched all of a sudden.  It's important to be able to push yourself, but only after an adequate amount of warming up.  Warm-ups are vital because it stretches the muscles without putting too much strain on them.  Should you go full force from the beginning, you could end up tearing or pulling something because of the amount of strain you put on yourself.

In the same way, it's important to ease out of the training and cool down.  In suddenly stopping, it confuses your body and with a sudden stop, it'll leave the lactic acid inside of the muscles and suddenly slow down the blood flow, which can disrupt the biomechanics of the human body.  It strains the body too much if you go for a harder run and then suddenly stop.

We need to take a little bit of time to get in and out of things because we need to adapt to it.  Sometimes, we are able to adapt to such things with ease, but other times, we need to make time to do that.  In understanding yourself and where you're at, you can help yourself out by taking some time to transition from one thing to another.