sleepybadger

I already knew this, but it was cemented in my mind this morning: In addition to tools to track my times and routes, I need variety in my walking and running routes and routines to keep me motivated.

So: I'm using Strava, which tells me how fast and how far I went and gives me a map of where I went, and I'm also using the Run the World app to do a virtual run/walk around the US (and after I finish the US, I could move on to going around Australia or the UK or Europe or Canada). The family photo challenge we do four times a year also motivates me to get out and move.

But, in addition to these various tools, I also need variation, and that includes not just different routes but also different ways of moving. I've never really liked following the same route day after day (with one exception: there was one place I lived in Perth which was close to the Swan River, and I never got sick of walking along the river trail day after day), so I use lots of different routes and variations on routes, and I like exploring routes I've never used before although there aren't many of those around here any more.

About four or five years ago my parkrun friend P introduced me to the concept of interval running, where you run for a short amount of time and then walk for a short amount of time (say, run for 60 seconds and then walk for 30 seconds) and repeat for as long as you like. This has now become known as "Jeffing", after Jeff Galloway who apparently first introduced the idea to the running world. This revolutionised my running and I never run any other way now; the walking intervals allow your body to recover from the effort of running and help prevent injury, and I've heard that using this method will allow older people to keep running for much longer than has been thought possible. There are also other variations of this method; one is "fartlek" which is a Swedish term for interval running, but is not as regimented as Jeffing because you can just decide "I'll run as far as that mail box and then I'll walk for a bit" or whatever you want. Another, which I've only recently heard about, is known as "Japanese Walking", which uses longer intervals of fast walking and moderate walking, say three minutes of each.

This morning I tried out Japanese walking, and found that trying something slightly different made me more enthusiastic about going for a walk in spite of yet another very warm and humid morning. I also sometimes walk at a moderate pace for 1 minute and then speed walk for 30 seconds, and I think I prefer that over the longer intervals, but working all this out and trying different variations (e.g. walk moderately for 30 seconds and then speed walk for 1 minutes, or run for 30 seconds and walk for 1 minute) definitely makes exercising more interesting for me.