This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Bucknell chapter.
If you have not started to notice already, the last three weeks of training have been very strenuous on your body, especially if the activity level is something new to you. An adequate amount of sleep is an essential part of training, and you should be trying to get 7-8 hours each night. Just like eating the right foods, getting the right amount of sleep fuels your body for the next day’s workout.
Not only does sleep make you feel refreshed mentally, but the physical benefits are plentiful as well. Sleep helps your running in a variety of ways:
- Your muscles repair during sleep.
- Consistent sleep can help you ward off sickness, as well as a major injury from constant strain on your body. Doing a workout sleep-deprived may change your form, and thus cause injury.
- Sleep helps you metabolize foods quicker. For runners, this is important to get the most nutrients out of the food you eat.
- The more rested you feel, the more likely you are to head to the gym. Adequate sleep can also make you more ambitious with your workouts.
Week 4
Beginner:
- Keep your running days at 5 for one more week. Four of the days, you should run 3-4 miles. Your fifth run should be at least 5 miles, but still under the 6 mile mark. These runs should be coming to you easier every week.
- On one of the two days that you do not run, try to get in 30 minutes of cross training, whether it is “ellipiticizing”, biking, swimming, aqua jogging, stair-stepping, or rowing.
- Try to do a couple of body weight exercises this week. Aim to do pushups after three of your runs. The other two days you run, and after cross training, shoot to do the five minute abdominal session. If you feel ambitious, try to do 8 minute abs on the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWjTnBmCHTY. If anything at all, the man in the video is highly entertaining.
- Your body still needs a day to completely rest and recover!
Intermediate:
- Keep your running days to five for one last week. Just like the prior weeks, four of the runs should be easy 4-5 mile jaunts. Your fifth run should still be around 6 miles, but try to keep a faster pace than prior weeks.
- Just like before, try to get 30 minutes of cardio by using an elliptical, bike, stair-stepper, or the pool.
- Since you have been doing a little bit of weight training, let your body take a little rest from the weights. After two of your runs, do a circuit of lower-body weight exercises. Do 30 seconds of lunges, squats, calf raises, donkey kicks, and fire hydrants (similar to donkey kicks but with your leg rising to the side). Go through the circuit twice. On two different days, do upper-body weight exercises. This circuit could consist of pushups, triceps dips, and pull ups or dead hang. Also go through this one twice. Of course it doesn’t hurt to do some abdominal exercises after the circuits, if you feel ambitious.
- Take a day to do nothing active.
Advanced:
- Try to run 6 times this week. Three of your days will be easy, relatively short days ranging between 3-5 miles. One of your days should be a long run around 7-8 miles, depending on how you feel with the extra mileage. This week will be your first track workout! Run for 15 minutes to warm up. Once you get to the track, we suggest you do a couple of stride-outs, where you run at a faster pace down the straight stretch of the track. For the workout, try to do between 5-8 400 meter (1 lap) intervals. Set a goal of how man you strive to do before you begin. With that number in mind, do the hard interval at a pace that you can maintain for the entire workout. We suggest you do these at a 5k pace, or approximately 80-100 seconds per lap. Use the pace calculator from last week to help you figure out your target pace. In between each hard lap, jog half a lap at a very easy pace (or walk if you need to). As always, finish the workout with a 10-15 minute cool down. The day after the workout, make your run very short and easy.
- Mix up your strength routine by doing a combination of free-weight activities and body-weight activities. For legs, try to do three weighted activities and three body-weight activities on two different occasions. On two different days, try to do the same thing with upper body activities. The exercises you do are at your discretion.
- As the mileage goes up this week, the day of rest becomes even more important to your recovery process. Take a full day of rest!