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Wellness Wednesday for October 12, 2022

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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As a running hobbyist, I've wanted to be able to run more, run faster, and run healthier. I picked up running in my mid-20s, was pretty decent within a couple years (3:08 marathon about 18 months after I'd run my first half marathon), but my progress stalled out not much later and my marathon PR is one that I ran back in 2015. In my late 30s, I figure that if I want to accomplish some of the fitness goals I have, I need to put some serious effort into them and I'm fortunate enough to be in a financial position where I can finally take some time for myself to do that. To that end, I left my software job in August with the intention of taking a few months away to focus on my fitness and some optimization projects for a small business that I co-own.

After 7 weeks away from my old job, I can happily report that this mission has so far been as successful as I could reasonably hope for. I set a new personal high for miles in a week by capping a 76 mile training week with 20 miles at a 7:03 pace. I ran a PR for a 5-mile race last weekend, my first PR since 2019. I'm on track to run 80 miles this week. I'm lifting weights more frequently than I have in years. I've been able to complete projects around the house that I'd been procrastinating on, keep things cleaner than I ever have, and cook for my wife and I most days. I've learned more about my business and have continued to increase profits there. Basically, everything's just going great at the moment.

I would strongly recommend this sort of refresh and reboot to anyone that's in the position to take it. This is the longest time I've taken away from working in about two decades and I don't think it would have even occurred to me to try it out if I hadn't seen some successful friends and family step away from the workforce for awhile before returning. We don't have to be in always-on mode, especially if your job is just a source of money rather than your identity.

This may be an annoyingly vague question, but is there any consensus in the running/fitness world as to what the 'minimum viable distance' per week for running is, in terms of improved mood, better sleep and other health benefits?

At the moment I'm managing to fit in around 3km on a treadmill 2-3 times per week after my resistance workout, and I'm wondering if this is enough.

The scientific evidence points to 21-30 minutes of cardio per session. See here for a screenshot of the relevant table.

Edit: the usual caveats apply to interpreting meta moderator analysis.

/u/Walterodim