Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Holy Smokes...I can Jog Now!

Throughout my entire fitness journey, I have always aspired to being able to jog, but could never quite get there.  At first, I had the diminished lung capacity one has when you smoke cigarettes.  Then, in April, I discovered that carrying a lot of weight on your body, does not help the stress that jogging imparts on the body.  I also became painfully aware then that my right knee would have no part of any jogging routine without constantly demanding that I quit this instant!

So now, 9 months later, my knee is finally strong enough to bear the shock of jogging and since I quit smoking several months ago, my overall endurance has soared greatly.  I am still a newbie at the whole jogging thing and have not graduated off the treadmill, but now I am able to sustain a steady pace of jogging/walking for about 20 minutes.  I begin with a warm-up of 2 minutes walking and increase the speed every 30 seconds until I hit about 4 mph.  I then jog for 2 minutes and walk at 3.5 mph for 60 seconds, then jog for 3 minutes and walk for 60 seconds, followed by a 4 minute jog and another 60 second walk, and finally wrap it up with a 5 minute jog and a 2 minute cool down.  I do this at the end of my usual workout to increase the amount of weekly cardio.

My first goal is to be able to sustain 30 minutes of straight jogging without rest.

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