My plan

I've always been interested in science, nutrition, and health.  I planned on being a pharmacist until my band sidetracked me for 15 years.  So every time I get into exercise, I spend a good bit of time looking up workouts and new info about new diets and philosophies about health and nutrition.  Well, this time, I'm all about interval training.  Here's why. . .

I enjoy running.  Enjoy might be an overstatement.  I don't enjoy exercising.  I dislike running the least of any exercise I've ever done.  I HATE lifting weights.  So when I heard about this interval training thing (I'm BRAND NEW to the concept so please comment and correct anything I say about it), I knew it was perfect for me.  I enjoy a challenge (I bought P90X and did it for about 15 minutes one day), and kind of enjoy running, so the interval thing is a match made in. . .purgatory? ? ?

Here's a list of the things I've done so far:

A trainer told me to do this:

jog a mile at a comfortable pace

run at 8.5 mph for 30 seconds

walk for 30 seconds

TWICE

run at 9.0 mph for 30 seconds

walk for 30 seconds

TWICE

run at 9.5 mph for 30 seconds

walk for 30 seconds

4 TIMES

run at 10.0 mph for 30 seconds

walk for 30 seconds

TWICE

I enjoyed this.  It was totally doable (not necessarily easy) at 8.5 mph and got really hard by the time I reached 10 mph.  Every time I did it (I've done it maybe 5 or 6 times), my heart rate (based on the crappy thing on the handles of the treadmill), got up to about 180.  I enjoyed it.

Then I looked up interval training on the Internet and didn't find a single routine that said to run and then walk at 30 second intervals.  Most of them were something like run for a minute, then run slower for 2-4 minutes, and none of them increased the speed every time.  So a typical thing I found was like run at 8.5 for a minute, run at 5.0 for 4 minutes.  Repeat 5 times.  So I made up my own and did this one day:

jogged about half a mile to get warmed up

run at 9 mph for 1 minute

run at 6 mph for 1 minute

I did that about 6 or 7 times, then

run at 9.5 mph for 1 minute

run at 6 mph for 1 minute

I think I did that twice

Then I talked to a trainer at DAC (the gym I go to) and he said to sprint then rest.  So he was saying to run at around 10 or 11 mph then hop off the treadmill.  So yesterday I ran at 6 mph for about 3 minutes, then did this:

run at 10 mph for 30 seconds

rest for 30 seconds

about 7 or 8 times

run at 11 mph for 30 seconds

rest for 30 seconds

I think I only did that twice

So, I've done 3 different versions of interval training, and I liked all of them.  The last one was definitely the hardest.  As far as the title of this post goes (My plan), I plan on doing the interval training (one of these three or anything else I hear from anybody with an educated opinion) and eventually adding some weights and other things.  I also want to start running outside again.  The treadmill is terrible for anything over about 30 minutes.

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