walking – The Journey of a Lifetime Learner

My weekly totals

First, let’s review summary of this week’s training: weekly mileage 50.02 km, weekly steps 104,094 (14871 steps daily average), total weight loss so far 5.2 kg and this week’s weight loss 0.9 kg.

About my weight loss

In regards to my weight loss, 0.9kg for this week is pretty OK and close to my 1 kg weekly weight loss goal. Also my total weight loss this week is at least 5.7 kg, as on Tuesday and Friday this week, my total weight loss was 5.7kg but for some reason immediately after both of those days, I was gaining weight. Those gain weights are mainly due to body water, full stomach or other short term factors so I don’t care about them. I have seen it a lot that my body weight would decrease suddenly. For example this Monday, I suddenly lost 1kg compared to the day before that.

My weight loss for the first 6 weeks was pretty straightforward, but my last year experience tells me that the second 6 weeks is way more challenging so I am mentally making myself ready for that. As a reminder I have to say that I was looking at the first 6 weeks of my diet as a long term project, so I didn’t push myself that much. Therefore if I start getting not appropriate results in the second 6 weeks, I am ready to push myself a little bit more. In anyways, lets see what will happen in the future.

Summary of this week’s activities

First, let’s review my activities during this week. I had 5 run activities in this week. On Monday (15/06) I had a 10K run with the following averages: (10.00 K, 5:41 min/km, 163 bpm, 15m elevation gain). On Wednesday (17/06) I had a 10K run with the following averages: (10.01 K, 5:21 min/km, 178 bpm, 28m elevation gain). On Thursday (18/06) I had a 10K run with the following averages: (10.00 K, 5:42 min/km, 161 bpm, 20m elevation gain). On Saturday (20/06) I had a 10K run with the following averages: (10.00 K, 5:56 min/km, 148 bpm, 19m elevation gain). On Sunday (21/06) I had a 10K run with the following averages: (10.01 K, 5:54 min/km, 171 bpm, 57m elevation gain).

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
10K Run	16	10K Run	10K Run	19	10K Run	10K Run	50.0 km
16263	7397	15763	16059	10523	16572	21517	104,094
82.2 kg	81.8 kg	82.7 kg	82.3 kg	81.8 kg	82.3 kg	82.3 kg

About my weekly mileage

This week, my weekly mileage was 50.02 km which was the highest weekly mileage in my new set of 2020 trainings. However I switched to the new training plan of two days 10K run and one day rest, but due to getting injured and being tired, I couldn’t complete my desired training plan last week. I have increased my weekly mileage by 47.7% this week compared to last week.

That was a safe movement because I stayed on the 30K weekly mileage long enough (five consecutive weeks) and at the same time I kept my total activities (my total weekly steps) constant (always around 100,000 steps). That means my body just changed the way it was burning calories from walking to running.

VO2Max and comparing activities to see my improvement

My VO2Max this week in my (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday) runs were (48, 47, 48, 50, 48) ml/kg/min respectively. In order to see my improvement, I want to compare my activity on 17/06 i.e. (10.01 K, 5:21 min/km, 178 bpm, 28m elevation gain) with my other activity on 05/06 i.e. (10.00 K, 5:33 min/km, 179 bpm, 29m elevation gain).

As we can see, all of the features of those two runs are the same (distance, my effort and terrain) except my pace. I had 00:12 min/km i.e. 3.6% improvement in 12 days which is pretty impressive. Indeed I had reduced my 10K time by 01:52 min in 12 days which is pretty good. I am really happy about it for two reasons, first because I am getting close to 10K sub 50 min. record and second I am doing it while I am still very overweight.

My lactate threshold pace and heart rate

On Wednesday (17/06), my watch updated my lactate threshold pace (5:25 min/km) and my lactate threshold heart rate (175 bpm). Again on Sunday (21.06), it updated my lactate threshold pace (5:31 min/km) and my lactate threshold heart rate (174 bpm).

About individual runs

After my hard effort Wednesday’s run (ave. heart rate 178 bpm), I still had a relatively fast run on Thursday (ave. pace 5:42 min/km ave heart rate 161 bpm) but after Thursday, I was really tired on both Saturday’s and Sunday’s runs. Fortunately, I did both of them in under 60 minutes without too much effort.

Experiencing “Cardiovascular Drift”

As I explained in my Sunday’s run (21/06) here, on Sunday, I experienced something strange called “Cardiovascular Drift”. That’s what I haven’t experienced during all of my 4000+ km runs so far and therefore I am a bit concerned about it. I am going to see a physician in this regards and I’ll update this post after that in future.

Update: I talked to a physician over a virtual care talk the day after. He told me if it happened again contact us but for one time we cannot do anything. I also asked him if I can resume my training after 48 hours of rest and he said yes. Like always talking to doctors is not helpful that much, but I just wanted to do it in order to make sure I am on the safe side.