Nothing much to report today, didn’t really have time for the full distance before work this morning, managed 7k at 12km/h (on a treadmill of course). Seemed pretty tough today actually but don’t know whether I just didn’t really have my heart in it.

Rest day tomorrow! Wooooo looking forward to a day off, heading for a weekend break with a hotel with a swimming pool which will be nice to use on Sat/Sun where I’m scheduled for a 4M/12M. Hopefully Sunday will be fine based on Wednesdays similar distance run.

Still dubious how I’m going to pick up the pace but hoping that building up the distances helps with the speed!!

Till next time.

N

Hey all. If there is any interest I will be doing a run on Tuesday after work (6pm) possibly with a colleague. Not too bothered about speed and will prob aim to do between 6-10miles depending on enthusiam.

If you fancy a session comment on this post and we can organise something.

Ta

Neil

Throwing the schedule out of the window today and to try make up for the slow Sunday run I decided to run much further than required, the plan recommends 6miles slow (sub 47mins).

Following the same routine as last Wednesday I set off a tiny bit earlier on route to a tube stop on the central line, at the time Ox Circus was the plan. The first mile as always seemed quite tough and having a quick glance at my heartrate clearly my body wasn’t quite ready for getting out! From that point on the run seemed fine. I kept to the suggested pace without too much of an issue. This was my first (marathon) run with my camelbak – I did a few summer short distances but always put too much liquid in the pouch! Found it quite nice being able to take on liquid with the gels as I ran…

Decided to carry on a couple of tube stops and goto Marble Arch instead adding on a mile or so. All in all a good run, no issues or niggles, hopefully all is on target!

Till next time.

N

According to the diary today was supposed to be a 4M fartlek session, opting for a pre-work run and not being able to find a buddy I decided to take the session in the gym instead.

I set myself a short sprint interval session averaging 250me fast and 200me or so recovery. The recovery pace was set at 12km/h. I intervaled upto a top speed of around 18km/h and fell no less than 16km/h. It was a very fast 6.6km – I think I finished 5km in under 22mins. Tough but ok just need to try it outside!

Tomorrow is a mixup to the schedule, diary has it at 6M in 57 mins, I am going to run the same route as last week and put my watch virtual partner on the faster speed.

As I write this I know my body isn’t at 100%, I have been sniffling and sneezing for days but I am still perfecty able to train so hopefully tomorrow will be no difference!

Till then…

Last week I posted a brief review on the KiFit/Ki Performance System and oddly since doing that I noticed its appearance in a TV program we watch.

One morning, having had to get up early for the BT engineer i flicked through Anytime on my tv and was presented with a title that I could hardly refuse “The Biggest Loser USA”. I didn’t know what to expect but 40mins I was hooked, now on its 8th series (in the UK), the show follows a group of excessively overweight people and forces them into training regimes with a weekly weigh off at the end. The guys on this program drop some huge amounts of weight over a small number of week but the show focuses predominantly on exercise.

Anyway on the arm of all the contestants was a band which when after a bit of google turned up the bodybugg or as we know it in the UK the KIFit. Would be great to see the contestants logins – that would be some seriously interesting reading! Now all they need to do is bring it to an English medium in the same capacity and I’m sure they will get interest!

Saturday morning was the designated 4M slow warm-up jog in preparation for the Sunday run and following a rest day on Friday. Plotting a loop online during the week I took to the frosty streets. The route I chose was hilly to say the least, thinking back now I don’t remember more than 200m that was flat, however this did not come as a suprise as I had done stretches of the route before. Easy 4m under the recommended time, perfect!

Sunday was billed in the diary as the first ‘race’. Having not been able to find an organised run to enter at the required distance (10km) I realised I would have to do it alone. I was also very aware of how quickly I was supposed to do it and wasn’t overly confident of my own ability to meet the target of sub 47mins. During the last summer I ran the British 10k in 46mins so know I can do it, however it wasn’t to be the case on Sunday.
» Continue reading “W4 D4 & D5 – Gentle jog and ‘Race’ day”

According to today’s schedule I was set to cover 5Miles with 3 of them at a fast pace. As I’m not very good at doing fast sessions on my own on the road I once again headed to the treadmill. I think soon I need to try upping the pace on the road so I know that I can close to doing what I do in the gym.

The schedule required the 3M to be covered at approx 8:15/M as I write this blog my brain has kicked in and I’m starting to wonder whether I actually ran fast enough (I hope I did). I set off at 15km/h and throughout the 4.6km I did not drop below 14km/h. Was that fast enough? (Goes off to get paper and do maths…) Oh good, as expected, much faster than the required 12km/h – good good I guess that makes sense as RW define it as ‘brisk’ hopefully my changing it to a fast isn’t an issue!

That’s my 3 midweek runs done, at the weekend I have a slow jog in prep for a ‘race’ style event. Apparently by now I should be able to do a sub 47min 10k and tomorrow I will plot out my route and give it a whirl. I think this is going to be ambitious but who knows, I think in the summer I got a 10k to sub 46 so I know I can do it, it is just whether my body is ready for it yet. That said, I have booked in a session to see Chris at the Sports Clinic on Saturday which should hopefully see away the last knots and twinges I have in my leg from skiing!

Till next time…

About a month ago in Runners World mag I saw an advertorial for a new style “body monitor”. I have always been one for gadgets when i’m keeping fit and for anyone that has followed my blogs on and off they will have seen reviews for nike+ kits and are possibly also aware that I now run with a garmin watch which I extract feeds for to show pretty maps on myself. So with that in mind I got in touch with the KiFit guys to see if they had any interface and API available which would make there site a lot more appealing to me by the fact I could extract information and show you what I was eating, doing etc on my blog…

About the same time last year I contacted a similar (cue comments about the tech’s not being similar) organization called MiCoach (I believe) who offered no facility to access data either and weren’t really prepared to talk to me with my techy hat on, however, the people at KiFit seemed a lot more responsive offering me a bit of a demo and also a demo account on there site to see if I could extract what I wanted and whether getting on the device would interest me.

A few days ago over the phone I had a chat with one of the chaps who worked with KiFit and we poked around the system, the user interface seems well constructed and very user friendly. The UI came as a bit of a surprised to me, it felt very polished (however after a bit of digging the Activity Mgr System looks like it has been around for a little bit longer than KiPerformance) and obvious. When you log in you are presented with a very shiny interface that shows your day stats pulling information from an armband you are supposed to wear 24/7 which measure motion, skin response, skin temp, heat flux and steps.

For me, one of the interesting displays is that relating to sleep patterns, something that always intrigues me. Sometimes I wonder whether I have had a bad run because of a poor night sleep or whether it is just another one of those “runners excuses”…

This device can tell whether you are reaching deep sleep and how often you stir during the night. On top of this there are some nicety, how much physical activity your are doing each day is nice and considering this is supposedly on you all the time it measures everything which extends what the Garmin does (plus the Garmins battery life is shocking so would only last half a day!)

Click for larger display

The online platform integrates in your daily food eating patterns which is pretty cool, but whether I would have the will power to store this every day would be interesting, the tool doesn’t quite seem invasive enough to force you to do it – with something that has to be done almost daily you have to have a lot of will power to maintain this. It would be interesting to see whether there stats show peoples inclination to insert dietary data dwindles as time progresses?

Anyway, after a few hours poking around at the UI am I interested? At the moment I would say yes, however, the biggest niggle I have for this device is cost. You can’t use the device without a subscription and you pay a monthly fee for the privilege. Whilst the monthly fee won’t break the bank alone couple this with a gym membership etc and the costs still escalate. Also once you have purchased the device who is to say that the website will still be up and working in 6months time or a new OS come out that renders the device inoperable. I actually think that it would make sense to have both an offline and online system. Garmin have a similar model, sure there offline app is pants but you still have that facility – plus with companies such as Garmin, Nike, Nokia (to an extent) who offer online exercise management tools I think you can rest assured a little bit due to the shear size of the corporation backing it, i’m not so sure about the KiFit, although I would like to be proved wrong…

I will hopefully be granted a little more time to play and poke before my trial account gets revoked – I love the system and if I could extend my running data with all this information there would be a statistics overload on this blog and perhaps I could possibly move to the next stages of health and fitness which is watching the diet.

It gets an initial thumbs up from me except for the monthly subscription costs, I think anyone serious about training either over a long period or up to an upcoming event could seriously benefit from this online diary. I suspect if I used this during my next 12 weeks of marathon training I would have some pretty awesome data on the system…Oh and yes, I managed to get data from there site in order to put on my blog – well I’m half way there, can log on, extract data now just creating the code to display it in a nice way…

If you missed the link at the top of the article you can visit the KiPerformance site here. Anyway – back to running I go…

N

(n.b. I should prob point out I haven’t actually got to use one of these devices or seen what they physically look like I have only had access to the website and sales talk.)

Looking back through my schedule this is my first ‘reasonable’ distance midweek run as for various reasons I have missed others. Much like the Sunday runs this was to be a slow run to help put miles in the leg banks at 8Miles. In order to make the most of my evening and laze around the tv I decided this distance could be covered before work without impacting my day.

As I did a number of pre-work runs last year I know and am familiar with a number of routes into central London and also into work. The run from home to work, from memory, was at it’s shortest about 15M so obv this route was to far. However, armed with my oyster card and the knowledge I had a spare set of clothes in the office, I set off from Woodford at 730ish aiming to get to Ox Circus and do the remainder of the journey on the tube.

The battery on my watch died I believe about 1/2mile from the end hence I think the route was about 11ish miles. The schedule listed an 8M/80min timeline which I easily matched and continued to run at a fast enough pace after that point to ensure even at 11M I was still running my miles under 10min. The run actually went pretty well, I was happy at the end especially as when the alarm went off this morning I was close to not bothering as felt a bit tired as well having odd pains in my legs! It just goes to show sometimes it’s worth getting out and trying as after about 1/2M things seemed really good!

Tomorrow sees a fast run session in the gym, again only a short session but it’s about maintaining a speed for a longer period of time than typically found on interval training.

Till then…

N

Getting back into the schedule was of utmost importance to me, I figured I could miss a week and catchup quite easily especially as the mileage was below what my body was capable of. with that in mind, an early drive to the tube saw me in the gym by 8 and onto the dreadmills.

The schedule has me doing:
1M jog
5* 800me fast (4min) w 200me recovery
1M jog warm down

I followed this mileage schedule although the speed may have been faster than requested – that said the session felt considerably more difficult than the W2 sessions, my quads where a bit tight which I can only assume is a consequence of the skiing and lack of running for a week!

Regardless of the pains experienced I completed the session as hoped. As an aside it appears that buffets in hotels are not good for weight loss put it this way, I thought that being on my skis for several hours a day would help with weight stability. Judging from the scales today am this appears to be far from the truth!

Till weds longer run…

N