Losing Weight Easily While Training For Your Race

Categories: Exercise, Triathlons Tags: a healthy way to lose weight, how to train for triathlons, pattie pilling, weight loss ways

You are so lucky! You can lose weight easily as you train for your race. There are three ways that you can run and kill two birds with one stone.  You get the best of both worlds in different ways. You can become faster and stronger.  These two qualities are fantastic while you become thinner. What more can you ask for? The three ways to do this is: interval training, tempo work and endurance runs.

Interval training or what some call HIIT: High Intense Interval Training. Interval training is good for two main purposes.  One reason is that it makes you faster. The second reason is that it helps burn more calories after your run.  Interval running is when you sprint 200-400 meters \ yards. 400 yards is the size of a football field. When you first start doing intervals you run for 30 seconds.  You then walk until your heart rate decreases back to close to normal.  You will work your way up to 2 minute sprints with a walk time of about 30 seconds; always letting your heart rate drop back to normal. You do this 4-5 times. It will take you about 20 minutes. As you improve you may want to increase your total time to 30 minutes. This is a good thing to do when you are short on time. Some suggest doing interval training 3 times a week but always having a rest day between Interval days. When you are training for a running race once per week is sufficient. You need the other days for different types of work.

Once to twice per week you will run a tempo run. It is also called a pace run. You will run this as if you were in a race.  It is about half of the race distance.  For instance, if you are training for a 5k then you will run 2-3k. Don’t push any longer of a distance. Even 4k is too much. Keep it low. Keep it to the pace you naturally will run the race.

Only once per week only you run a long run. This is your endurance run. This is the longest run of the week.  During this run you really don’t care about distance, you care about time. If you are training for a half marathon work your way up to running 2 hours on your long run. This is where you are going to build your strength. Plug in your ear buds or grab a friend and have fun. You should always be able to carry on a conversation in this run.

There you have it. Three ways to have fun, become stronger and fitter as well as losing weight easily.