Last week I went for my first outdoor run with a friend.  I have been running for more than 6 months at the gym, and felt I was sufficiently prepared to attempt to run outdoors in the real world, with someone who let’s say is certainly in better physical condition than I am in, and who is also considerably younger, and who is a karate instructor by profession.  Ok, I’m an idiot, alright?  That’s all too clear now.  Still, I didn’t expect to do that badly, the distance we agreed on was pretty comparable to what I normally do, and I figured as long as I ran at the pace I usually run at I should be able to more or less finish in a reasonable time.  It was the perfect plan.

More than one week later, I am still limping around suffering the repercussions of that perfect plan.  The distance (as estimated by my fit friend) I am now hoping was way way longer than he and I had figured on.  The pace we ran at was a complete unknown to me since I have never had to set and maintain my own pace before (the treadmill does it for me, my goal in that scenario is simple: run fast enough that you don’t fall off the treadmill).  I’m now hoping that the pace we actually ran at was rather optimistic, shall we say.  The problem of pace was sort of compounded by my good natured, well intentioned, ludicrously toned fitness coach who was running along beside me at a much slower rate than he is used to, so he had lots of wind left to “encourage” me to greater efforts.  This, and elderly pride, no doubt led me to ignore certain warnings from my body that would have normally been noticed and acknowledged.  Warnings like: “Asthmatic geeks don’t run, do they?”, “Whoa, that blood clot just moved about six inches closer to your brain.” and “That plinking sound isn’t guitar strings breaking, but is actually the fibers of your Achilles tendon stretching and peeling off the bone.”  So, I haven’t been running since then because I am limping along, trying to pretend that my injury will no doubt heal itself, it just needs another week off.  Yeah, of course.

So naturally, this article caught my eye this morning.  It’s about mistakes that people make at the gym and when they workout.  Particularly this one:

17. Taking on too much at first. “Whether on a treadmill at home or working out at an exercise facility, people tend to do too much too soon,” says Kasper. “They put themselves at risk for an orthopaedic injury.”

Sigh.