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:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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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.
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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.
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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).
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
New Year's resolution check-in:
How goes it @self_made_human, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @ThomasdelVasto and @falling-star?
A sub 6:00 mile for the full 5k is bad?
The best mile I ever ran in my life was 5:58 and I literally spent the rest of the day coughing blood. How do you do it?
For context my PR is in the 14:50s. I've run that pace for a half-marathon before, but have gotten fat the past few years so am slower.
I started running when I was in 7th grade and slowly built mileage throughout high school, college, and the first few years of grad school, which resulted in my peak fitness in 2021 with PRs of 14:54 in the 5k, 30:40 in the 10k and 4:17 in the mile. The key was just lots and lots of running, a substantial amount of swimming and biking, and some lifting. As well as heavy dose of natural talent.
Since not being part of an NCAA team, I've gotten slower and really since 2024 where I got COVID and then proceded to gain 20 pounds in a matter of months, my fitness has definitely taken a hit. I'm trying to get back into it though and have lost most of the weight I want to and am back to good mileage (67/week). So hoping it's just a matter of time.
Big tip from me would be to slow everything down. A lot of people end up running pretty hard on what is supposed to be their easy run, my past self included. Not only does this inhibit the system you are trying to train (your aerobic system), but it also reduces the amount of training you can handle and makes you hate running. If you really want to get better, I would suggest buying a heart rate monitor and capping all your easy runs at 60-65% of your max heart rate. This is going to feel really slow and you may have to walk all uphills, but you'll quickly see improvement. About 1-2 of your days you can go as hard as you want, but most runs should be this easy.
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I'll let @thejdizzler comment on his training for himself. But don't discount his elite level dedication to diet.
Reading that, it makes sense. He puts as much effort into running as I do into lifting.
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