My morning started off with me tossing and turning, hitting the alarm clock and extra time and grumbling about having to head out and train. Today I was scheduled to do HIIT sprints. It was my coach's suggestion for helping me improve my pacing for this weekend's race. Doing the 10km is no problem, I'm an endurance runner, but doing the 10km under a specific time... ya, problem. I anticipated it being a rough wake up call for HITT sprints so I had gone to bed with almost all my training gear on. All I had to do was pop up, brush my teeth, slap on my baseball hat and shoes, and head out the door.
Made it out the door about 20 minutes later than anticipated but none the less I made it.
ABOUT HIIT
HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. It's an advanced form of cardio training that revolves around alternating periods of short intense anaerobic exercise with recovery exercise periods. When doing HIIT, you should start off with a short warm up period before you go into the interval component of the training and then follow with a cool down period. The timing of your intervals is your own preference, as is the number of sets you do, but this is what my HIIT setup looks like:
My HIIT sprint training:
WARM-UP -- 5 minutes of light jogging, at a level of 3-4 perceived exertion
INTENSE -- 20 seconds of sprinting at a level of 8-9 perceived exertion
RECOVERY -- 20 seconds of light jogging, at a level of 4-5 perceived exertion
[8 sets of the above intervals]
COOL-DOWN -- 5 minutes of very light jogging, at a level of 3 perceived exertion.
[Total time training, 16mins & 20 seconds]
The mix between these two opposing intensity levels helps build endurance as well as push the body to exhaustion. HIIT requires very little time in compassion to regular cardio training, about 20 minutes, but the short bursts of intense exertion make it a difficult and tiresome training strategy.
Snickers is a huge advocate for using this for running and Junior Mint used to make me use this whenever we went running on the mountain. Around the sixth set though, I'm kicking my own butt for being a high achiever and visions of me eating my protein-packed pancake after is what gets me through it. It's not a very complicated form of training but it's very intense. I hate it with a passion so I constantly have to remind myself that it's a shorter workout and that I don't have to do it often. I've been trying to do it every once and a half a week but must admit I've struggled with keeping on track with it. The other day I did it at Hulk's but switched up my sprints with skipping. I'd do double-jumping with the rope for the intense part and then single jumps for the recovery. It worked out really well but wow did my forearms burn after doing it!
I had downloaded a new app -- Caynax HIIT -- to help me with my timing... terrible app! It beeped the whole entire time, blasting annoying beeps ringing through my earphones. Usually I use an old school kitchen timer that simply resets and starts over every time I press it but one of my clients has it. Today I decided to do something different; I used distance instead of time. Behind the Shinsaegee Mall, right where I used to live, is where I do my HIIT sprints so I marked out two spots on the path by the river there. I'd sprint to the one marker, turn, then lightly jog to the other -- that was 1 set. I got some crazy looks by some ajjumas walking out on the path and one even decided to stand and watch me as I raced back and forth. No worries though. They clearly had no idea what I was doing, obviously, so I'm sure I must have looked strange. I won't look strange on race day though when I pass my competitors!!! I done several half marathons but it's been about eight years since I've done a shorter race -- a 10km.
I had logged into my Map My Run app on my phone to track it because I was curious as to what it'd look like after I finished. It ended up being a series of zig-zags back and forth... hahaha.
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