Improving Endurance

As I now enter the final stages of rehabilitative physiotherapy, one of the things that K now needs me to do is to work on improving my endurance and then cardiovascular fitness. This is not something that K can do for me in physiotherapy or with physiotherapy exercises. We have talked about walking and improving my speed. Walking is important for reinforcing my new movement patterns in parallel and for whole trunk involvement.

Last week I timed myself walking in the park:

Some rough calculations on a google map of the part of the park I 'timed-walk' would make my walk approx 1km. I had already walked to the park before I did the test (perhaps call that a warm up). I didn't do the test 'flat-out' but worked out where I was going to walk to and set both music (chose jazz music for speed) and set timer. Took me 08.45. I then walked around the park for a further 15 minutes before repeating the test in reverse. I chose the same music to listen to to make the test as comparative as possible. The time back took 08.51 but is hardly significant. I would not say that I "went for it" and that I did not really push myself at all. I think that this is because I am still quite fatigued.

In 2006 I walked 479 metres in 5 minutes so I am now doing c1000 metres in c8.45. Not sure how to work out the difference(!)

I think it would be worth repeating this test when I am better in myself and am really able to push myself properly because I think I could to it faster than that, so perhaps I will repeat the test in another 1-2 weeks on a "good" day and then make an average of a comparatively worse day to get some parameters. I could then periodically repeat the test when I have been doing more walking in general and swimming and/or cycling.