It's been a while. I'm Hiroki, a new staff member at OLENO.
It's already been six months since I started running again since I was a university student.
At first, I couldn't even run 1km on the road at a 6-minute pace, but now I can run 10km on the road at a 5-minute pace.
However, when it comes to road running, I honestly don't have any set goals and I'm just doing it loosely, so I feel like my progress will stop at some point. Marathons don't appeal to me either.
Anyway, my goal now is
To beat my boss, who has been a trail runner for five years.
My boss seems to be more suited to long races,
For me, when it comes to races over 50km,
Because I don't want to run anymore .
I'm also steadily going running in the mountains with the goal of winning a race of less than 30km within a year.
However...
Anyway, the climb is too steep.
The difficulty of climbing a mountain for the first time (I climbed a few steps, stopped, walked a few steps, stopped again, and felt like jumping off a cliff)
I haven't been able to overcome this at all, and I'm still climbing while muttering to myself that I want to give up halfway through.
Lately I've been wondering if I'm training wrong because even though my speed has increased and I've been shortening the distance when I run on the road, there's still no change.
When I search online, I find lots of articles saying that the quickest way to start practicing on the trails is to practice on the trails, but I just can't find the time to go out on the trails.
After work, it's too dark to go running, so I usually go out on weekends to play.
First, make a hypothesis and solve it to the best of your ability.
The only way to improve things is to find and eliminate the problems, so I tried to come up with my own hypothesis as to what the problem might be.
Hypothesis 1: The pace and tempo are poor, increasing the burden.
Hypothesis 2: You are running in a way that makes you tire easily.
Hypothesis 3: You don't have enough muscle mass for climbing.
These are the things I can think of. And,
The most likely hypothesis is hypothesis 3.
When I was doing track and field, I had a waist bomb in my hands, so I neglected weight training for my gluteus maximus (buttock muscles) and quadriceps (thigh muscles).
At the time, my way of training the above areas was doing squats with weights, but because of my poor posture, it put a tremendous strain on my lower back, forcing me to go to the hospital, which is why I started slacking off.
Also, due to my running style, I found that training my core, pectoral muscles, shoulder blade area, and iliopsoas muscles and linking them all together worked well, so I focused on training those areas.
Of course, if you ask me whether hypotheses ① and ② apply, I would say that they do, but since the priority is to remove the biggest bottleneck, I will be thoroughly eliminating hypothesis ③ by the end of July.
As for what I will do, I will be doing muscle training.
We will train the hips and thighs 3 to 4 times a week.
- Hip lift with one leg raised 20 times x 3 sets
・Normal squats 15 times x 3 sets
If you have the time
・Bulgarian squats 15 times x 3 sets
I think I'll continue to do that.
The strength training is explained in the article in the link below.
https://www.mtgec.jp/wellness/sixpad/list/parts_hip/
I will report back at the end of July on how much has changed.
Don't worry, even if you run slowly you will still grow.
But normally
10km road running 2-3 times a week
and
Trail running once a month (10km to 15km)
However, he has made quite a bit of progress, so if you don't want to push yourself that far but still want to get faster, this is a good idea.
December 1, 2024 First trail run 12.41km → 3 hours 36 minutes 56 seconds 17 minutes 28 seconds/1km
February 2, 2025 First trail running race 23.64km → 4 hours 5 minutes 17 seconds 10 minutes 22 seconds/1km
May 11, 2025 2nd Trail Running Race 14.32km → 2 hours 17 minutes 48 seconds 8 minutes 44 seconds/1km
And now when I think about it, I realize that it's true that I love running, or rather, I love improving myself.
And I want friends
I think one of the reasons for this is that I've always practiced alone and raced alone, so I don't have much motivation.
If there are any kind people in Nara or Osaka who would be willing to let us join their group, we would be very grateful if you could send us a DM on the social media accounts listed below.
https://www.instagram.com/oleno.jp/
Thank you for reading to the end.
