Ever mindful of how grueling the Brown belt test was, my focus has been directed at my cardiac fitness. Luckily one of my friends is a physical therapist and has a impressive knowledge in sports training. Unfortunately, he reckons that I need to focus on anaerobic exercise as it matches my level of activity during testing.
About two or three weeks ago I tried emulate what that might be by taking a look at various workouts on-line and mirroring what I could. My normal workout is kata, rowing machine, kata, burpees, etc. If I can do 40 minutes I’m impressed with myself. I’ve estimated that 170 bpm is my anaerobic threshold and my PT has told me that I need to get up there and work at that for 30 seconds or more and then bring it down to 165 or less for a few minutes and then drive it back up.
So Dave calls me up and asks me to go running with him as part of his routine and I think to myself, “what a great idea. I’ll be able to confirm my level of fitness in an objective fashion”. I told Dave that I’d probably be able to do a mile, but after that I couldn’t say. No problem we’d run as far as we could, follow it up with walking and then sprint up hill on a 5K course. I should have known ahead of time that I’d be pushing myself well beyond my capabilities.
The first mile was entirely pleasant, I was pushing 160+ most of the time so a small hill would blast me past 170. It’s the perfect interval training! And then we got to mile 2. I wasn’t blacking out, but I definitely just couldn’t get enough air – what a horrible feeling. Objectively, I thought this was really exactly what I needed, but subjectively the feeling of suffocation is about as worse as it gets for me. On top of that Dave looked very relaxed and not out of breath at all. If I had the energy I would have been bitter and jealous.
By mile three I was mostly walking fast but he had designed his course with the hills at the very end of the track and as agreed upon earlier we had to run up the hills. Perfect for anaerobic work, but now my legs weren’t cooperating. The simply weren’t functioning. I’ve heard people say that it’s like moving through molasses and I would say that was very accurate, but on top of that I couldn’t breath. On the last hill I was faltering and had to restart the running many times and just fell over at the top. Dave hauled me to my feet and made me walk around for another 10 minutes. He’s the devil.
When I was somewhat rested I wanted to show him my test kata and could barely get through it. No balance or strength. Yikes.
Today I feel like someone beat me with hammers. Ugh.
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