Project Half Marathon: I’m no good at running quickly, and no better at running slowly

A good five weeks have passed since Claudio and I officially embarked on our «run the Greifensee half-marathon» project. As you might recall, it kicked off with the performance test that put me out of action for a week with an inhuman calf cramp.

For a week I hobbled through life, even on crutches in the beginning, trying to coax my muscles into bearing weight again with a Blackroll and massage gun. Over the Easter weekend, I went for a long walk. On Easter Monday, 1 April, I felt confident enough to complete my first round of training for the Greifensee Run.

Mind you, the designation «training» is to be taken with a grain of salt. I want to start by building up my basic endurance while burning off a few kilogrammes of excess fat. To do this, I should keep my heart rate at 142 beats per minute (bpm), which I generously interpret as within 140 to 145 bpm. Running on flat terrain, I achieve a pace of 7:45 to 8:00 minutes per kilometre. On paper, this rather slow pace isn’t surprising; I knew I’d have to start off slowly.

What I didn’t expect is just how slow it would feel in reality.

Here’s the thing: if I wanted to run on perfectly flat terrain, I’d have to confine myself to a running track. In Winterthur, where I live, the roads all go up and down. And that puts a literal end to my jogging. I’m not kidding. Even just walking briskly uphill causes my heart rate to rise to over 155 beats, not to mention my pace drops to an average of 8:30 minutes per kilometre. This realisation was sobering and frustrating.

The scales are going up and down

Now, with a good four weeks of training under my belt, running super slowly feels much better. On average, I managed to conquer a longer run every three days with running times of 75 to 90 minutes. In other words, always making sure I run long enough to stay in the fat-burning zone for as long as possible at a low, constant load. And long enough to train my basic endurance and ensure that my glycogen stores (a form of carbohydrate) were quite empty.

But on the scales, it’s still a rollercoaster ride. The culprit is a retreat last week that proved a tad detrimental to my dietary resolutions. Allowing myself a cheat day every two weeks is no problem. And I don’t meticulously count every calorie I eat. But two days in a row with a hearty breakfast, lunch and evening meal had a much bigger impact on the scales than I’d have liked. My starting weight at the beginning of April was 84 kilogrammes (rounded down). In two weeks, I lost nearly 1.5 kilogrammes. In two days, I gained another 1 kilogramme and have since then lost another 1.5 kilogrammes over the span of a week and a half.

But kilogrammes aside, my runs these days feel very different from my first run. I find my rhythm much faster, can run much more steadily within the planned heart rate range without constantly overshooting or falling below it – and on flat terrain, my pace is 7:15 minutes per kilometre with a stable heart rate of around 142. That’s progress! Sure, it’s still slow. But hey, baby steps.

Eating healthier – starting next month

Back to kilogrammes and, more importantly, my diet. I underwent a metabolic analysis at Medathletik (website in German) and found out I primarily burn carbohydrates, and little fat and protein. I’m still finding it rather difficult to change my diet. I like to cook and eat. Both are important for my mental health. I do find it interesting to try out new things, though. It’s no problem for me to pay attention to the ingredients and primarily work with the foods that are currently best for me.

The question is, what are these foods? Finding that out is my next challenge. I’ve already started looking into the ingredients of many foods in an effort to glean what’s packed with carbs, where I can get healthy fats and how I’ll be able to fill my protein stores. Finding trustworthy sources is no easy feat; Google spits up gigantic amount of what’s obviously junk. And some of these super-fit fitness influencers on Instagram, whose target group I apparently fall into, offer tips that are about as helpful as a calf cramp.

I definitely need to find a solution to the question of «How should I adjust my diet over the next few months so that I can stick to it in the long term without constantly feeling like I have to give up all the good stuff?»

But up first is a week-long vacation in Ticino, where I’ll be relaxing and enjoying my meals.

Want to follow along my journey? Find the Project Half Marathon series here: