Ernie Was Right (He Made Me Say That)!

Well, it turns out that the "Ernie style of running" may be the right one after all. According to research from Denmark, it shows that jogging for no more than two and a half hours a week at a very leisurely pace will extend a woman's life bye 5.6 years and a man's bye 6.2. According to this study, running is like drinking....there is an optimal health benefit from two drinks a day, where more or less is not as valuable. Of course, being one who never follows the rules, I have always been either a runner with a drinking problem, or a drinker with a running problem. Never could fully control my desire for both. Today I went to the gym armed with a plan for the day. I got on the treadmill and cranked it up to an incline of 6%, and warmed up walking at a setting of 3.6. I then proceeded to try short 30 second alternating intervals of jogging at 4.2, with walking at 3.6. The good news is that the pain to the outside of the knee and down the leg was gone. The bad news was that my knee pain was reasonably uncomfortable. I got thru 20 minutes of this and then did 20 minutes on the exercycle, followed bye all the usual weight activities. Came home and iced twice, and then went about the rest of my day. It appears that this kneecap scraping is gonna take a good bit longer to recover from. So, my target for full running has moved all the way to years end....I will give this same workout a go next monday. So, if I follow the Ernie plan and try to get up to 5 runs a week for around 30 minutes, that would result in about 15 miles a week. I would love that right now.....Deb reminded me that even a broken clock is right twice a day, so not to give Ernie too much credit. But hey, the boy got it right!