Or possibly a jogging experiment…

After a lengthy conversation with Nancy from “My Years of Sweat” about her dislike of running and the definition of running vs jogging and the relative paces of each, I decided to go for a run on Friday night, but felt slightly paranoid while I was doing it.

Was I running?

Was I jogging?

Did it matter?

Was I wasting my time?

I came to the following conclusions:

Jogging is a type of running so yes I was running (albeit very slowly and in intervals) although I don’t really care if some people deem it jogging 🙂

The paces that are set down in places like gyms for jogging verses running are arbitrary and change according to the person involved and their ability.

Basically if both feet are off the ground at the same time, and you are not moving with a rolling heel – toe motion (I have been reading about barefoot running…this last bit came from there) then you are running.

Despite all this, I don’t really call myself a runner. I sometimes run, but I am not a runner, I thought I might be becoming one at one point but I am not.

I like the running I do, I have improved and hopefully will continue to do so, but I am not dedicated enough to focus on running enough to be a runner per se!

Lastly, I am not wasting my time doing it, I raise my heart rate and breathing rate much more in the run intervals, and in doing so I improve my CV endurance, I have short walk intervals where my body learns to recover quickly. All these things help with the dancing…and logical or not, I feel like I am fitter when I dance, if I incorporate some runs into my schedule.

I hasten to add, that Nancy never suggested that I was wasting my time, or that I wasn’t a runner… all of these questions were from my own brain! 🙂

I decided to run without a fixed interval pattern this time. I roughly followed the pattern on the Zombies run app where I walked in the story clips and ran during the songs, but I didn’t follow that religiously…

It wasn’t my best run, I think I was over thinking it…

but I did more or less enjoy myself, and I realised at the end, I hadn’t run for two weeks and therefore I wasn’t too bad 😀

I also remembered during this run that I have to keep in mind the real reason I took up running in the first place…

I run in case I ever got picked up by the Tardis to be Doctor WHo’s companion… running is important to that job 🙂 I wrote about it here:

the Dr Who contingency!

Day 364 complete 😀