Adding Percussive Therapy to Running
Welcome to my monthly health report 😊. July has been the month of consistency 😊. I was able to keep up and execute pretty much everything I had planned for. My weight loss has been consistent with a 4.2 kgs / 9.25 lbs decrease. I’m now down to 92kgs / 202 lbs. I’m totally fine with any weight loss at this point. I’m not looking for a particular pace. I’m still doing one meal a day just after morning cardio and fasting for the rest of the day.
On the cardio front, I have implemented the changes that were part of my monthly plan for July. On week 3, starting on the 11th, I increased my daily runs from 12 km to 14 km. Additionally, I have begun incorporating some interval training, one on the 20th and another on the 31st. Those interval trainings were definitely fun and an excellent reminder to my body how fast I could run if I wanted to. Other than that, for most of my runs, I have actually decided to slow down a little to keep increasing baseline mileage without injuries. Right now, increasing the pace is not my goal. I want to run longer, not faster. Still, the interval trainings here and there should also help with speed.
Two runs should have caught your eye. The ones on the 10th and 23rd are longer than 2 hours 😊 Yes, these are long-run tryouts. To be exact, those are 21km half-marathon runs. That means, YES, I have accomplished the half marathon race during training. You might remember that I’m training for an official half marathon end of August in Eskisehir, Turkey. Unless something unexpected comes up 😊 I should be good at hitting that goal and the race.
Sleep and Food
Still doing an intermitted fasting diet with a single large meal during the first half of the day. It is usually a big meal after the morning fasted cardio. Nothing has changed on that front.
On the sleep side, it looks like my sleep time increased on average by 10 minutes, but that is definitely not an intentional change. I wish it was. One thing that I’m very interested in monitoring is a potential change in other sleep metrics. I have just got a brand new bed, and it feels great! It did already help with some back pain issues. I’m wondering if sleep data will show any significant changes. We should be able to see something, if anything, next month.
Recovery
On the recovery side, I have just received my compressions socks. I did not have the chance to test them out yet. However, I got something else. A Theragun Pro 😊 . Percussive therapy is something I have been trying with a physiotherapist for a couple of months now. It all started with my desire to improve my back and neck pain, herniated discs on both. That’s a story for another day, but overall I fell in love with percussive therapy and ended up doing some research. Apparently, it is an excellent recovery device already used by pro athletes and many others. I should say that instead of the PRO version, Theragun Prime might be a better fit for most, but I decided to go with the big gun as the device returns are pretty much impossible in Turkey, in case you change your mind. So far, I love it. I’m using it after every run and even on rest days. On rest days, I do a small set of recovery exercises suggested by Recover Athletics and do the percussive therapy afterward.
With that, it’s a wrap for July. I will keep doing what I do and probably increase the daily runs to 15.5 km adding another 10% range. I will have a few trips, so keep in touch on Strava if you are wondering where I will run next. Enjoy the summer!