I'm just loving seeing this improvement and how when I am finished I don't really even feel like it was all that difficult to accomplish. I guess the whole sticking with something even though at first you are terrible at it really does ring true.
I had said in the past that I feel as though running a long distance doesn't feel that difficult to me anymore and I still stand by that. The thing is though, that I run as fast as I am comfortable with inside of a certain BPM (heart rate) range. I don't really pay much attention to how fast I am going other than when my watch lets me know this information every km or so.
When I finished and saw that I had done this at an average of 7mins per km, I was extremely pleased.
To some this heart rate probably seems a bit high but I am intentionally entering zone 4 heart zone without going too far into it. I probably do in fact end up going further than I really plan to at points but I was feeling good during this run and never really felt as though I was getting winded or sore. This is really special to me.
In fact, I probably could have gone significantly further but I was back near my house and the only way I can go on the trail is another 5k loop (or turn around) and it was extremely cold that day and I didn't want to risk needing to do some sort of walk while my sweat slowly but surely turned into solid ice.
There are a lot of reasons why this is so pleasing to me but the main one is that I can remember a time when it was difficult for me to run a single kilometer around 7 minutes and now I am going 12 of them in a row.
Back in my weightlifting only days, the notion of doing 90 minutes of cardio without stopping would have just made me laugh at how impossible that is.
Now as far as my muscle mass is concerned I am not enjoying that I am losing a lot of it and my maintenance lifting sessions are not doing much to prevent that... they can't possibly.
But I try to focus on the positives and this is very positive for me. It took a lot of dedication to get here though and while I am going to miss the muscles on the top of the body, the most important muscle is the heart and since I can now do this and not even feel like it is extremely difficult, I suppose we can successfully say that I have done something really good for my overall cardiovascular system, something that no amount of lifting could ever possibly achieve.