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

I sit writing this on my phone overlooking a mountain and that may explain why w3 of training was can celled…much like last year I incorporated a week of skiing into my training schedule however unlike last year I haven’t even done one run…the promise of a treadmill at the hotel made me think I would at least get in an interval run but the day I tried (Tuesday) the treadmill proceeded to cut out and restart every minute. After about 10mins and 1km later I gave up and that was my training! I am hoping that the stresses and pressure on my legs whilst skiing can’t have done a disservice and perhaps I will be able to resume into w4 without issues!

Just before flying to Andorra on Sunday I did manage to fit in a Saturday morning long slow run. The snow had finally melted and it was the first opportunity in weeks to get out onto the roads. However, whilst the snow had gone the rain came down and I possibly was out in the wettest conditions I have experienced (including last years training!).

I opted to try a new route, which turned out to be a bad idea, the first 8 or so miles went pretty well albeit on a really dull set of roads. However at about the 8m point I managed to hit a forest trail. First instincts told me to turn round however I didn’t and 1m further I found myself on a muddy path leading onto a waterlogged park(snow had just melted). My trainers now weighed double and my socks were sopping. I took this as a sign to find the quickest and shortest route home as not sure I really wanted to get more blisters which seemed poss given how wet I was! » Continue reading “W3 Cancelled (Includes W2 D5 The Long Run)”

Not a particularly exciting post today as it was just listed in the schedule as a gentle 4miler as a precursor to the Long Short Run I will be doing tomorrow. These (normally) Saturday runs seem a little peculiar to me and didn’t feature at all last year in my own training – the schedule has these short sub 5M runs every week and I guess they must have them for a reason!

Anyway not much to report, treadmill run, 40 mins or so 6.4km pre work session followed by a quick steam then done. I’m not really sure what to do about tomorrows run, the ’schedule’ has me down to do 9M over 86 mins however this seems to be regressing when it comes to distance so I’m going to adhere to the pace they recommend but extend it to about 14 miles or that of the W6 schedule (2hr 15mins). Not sure what route I will do but to be safe I intend a bit of a loop bringing me back to near the flat at around 10/11M just in case! Will blog tomorrow with an update, hopefully be out on the roads by 9ish.

As an aside I follow Liz Yelling on Twitter and notice she was involved in a podcast which I listened to this morning, apart from the odd sound issues which I’ll ignore as it’s a first show it has it wasn’t too bad. For all you commuters out there with iPhones and iPods subscribe and have a listen, it may motivate you into doing another run when excuses are being made I hope his flourishes into a nice weekly podcast, see www.marathontalk.com for more info.

Yesterday I had to finally admit to skipping on a days training. I’m clearly not 100%, feeling poorly and very heady. I had planned on getting up early and doing the 10k on the road as on Tues the ground was starting to look a lot less slippy. On weds I woke up to another overnight snow dump and coupled with my feeling ill I decided the rest day would be most useful for me.

Weds schedule was a 10km slow and today was a brisk/jog interval split. I figured the intervals may have been more useful for me so opted to skip the slow and go for the later:
1.6km @ 10.9km/h
3.2km @ 14-15.5km/h
1.6km @ 10km/h

True to tradition of a runner had some odd twinges in my left leg, going to put that down to the increased training I’m doing! Did use the foam roller today to massage my leg a bit when I finished to try remove the knots…

Tomorrow is the short warm-up to Saturdays ‘long run’ hopefully take it nice and slow and get me going!

Till next time…

Finally back inline with the schedule I set of to the gym for my allocated interval session. I always intended on doing a number of my interval sessions on the treadmill as I believe I can push the speed a lot more than I would be able to do on the streets.

The RW schedule is actually quite a toughy with the splits having a distance of 1.5miles armed with the worst case speeds I headed for a lunchtime gym session across the road from work. I have had to tailor these plans a little to fit into the hour that I’m allocated and have sacrificed the warmup and down distances to allow me a run of less than 50mins giving me 10mins or so to change and get back. The run today went as follows:
1km warmup @ ~10.5km/h
3×2.4km fasts @ 12-15.5km/h (800me recovery @ 10.5)
1km warmdown.

I really tested myself on the fasts today, breaking them into 3 sections 1km@ 15km/h, 1km@14.5km/h and 0.4km@15.5km/h. I’m aware none of these speeds are achievable on the street but it’s worth pushing myself and my heart rate! On the final interval I even put in a bit more raising the speed to around 17km/h but not for too long!

Good session today, worryingly I can feel a blister starting to form on my left big toe so need to watch that, but in stark contrast to yesterday. Did the 10k in under 48mins and baring in mind that includes a 1km warmup that’s not too bad!

6m slow run tomorrow, hopefully won’t be too bad, only concern is my lack of a rest day!

Following a disruption to my weekend schedule as I was heading up North to
visit some of Laura’s friends in Manchester I headed once again to the dreadmills in Shepherds Bush fitness first and set the speed to 10.4km/h as per the schedule.

I think I have the early symptoms of a mild cold as recently I have struggled to sleep and suffering from some aches, a runny nose and other ailments associated with a cold and today was no different. Following a poor night sleep I still got up and ready as I didn’t want to miss a run even if I didn’t completely do the distance. The run was really tough, for such a slow speed I was feeling tired and getting aches in places I don’t remember experiencing before. Hopefully, a good night sleep tonight coupled with some fruit maybe my savior as I suspect with my skiing hol next week if I follow the schedule I won’t have a rest day until Sunday – not ideal.

Tomorrows run is my interval day which should push and challenge me if my body is up for it! At the moment I’m spending a lot of time on the treadmills which I’m not really enjoying but the pavements around home are far too treacherous to go out on – not the best start to the training schedule!

As an aside, after my skiing I think I will spend some time focusing on my diet, increasing the amount of fruit and veg I intake as well as cutting out the chocs and sweets, the problem is the sweet cupboard is still fairly full from Xmas so may need to palm that off to others soon – any takers?

That’s it for now until tomorrows run – 1.5m fast intervals…

Having promised a review of all of the technology I run with for some time I have finally decided to pull my finger out and actually do it. It seems fairly obvious to review my Nike+ device first as it is one of the first gadgets I really purchased to use whilst running and I am still using it. At a later point I will create a subsequent review of my Garmin Forerunner watch should anyone want to know about that!

In about Feb ‘08 I started running, I’m sure most thought it was a whim, a passing fad. However, for my birthday I asked for an Ipod Nano and whilst in the States I picked up one of the nike+ widgets. Darren,  a colleague from work already had one of these so I’d half seen it in action and was eager to get out with it (judging by my archive I went out 3 days after getting it!)

Before you begin (hidden not so obvious extras!)

So you have purchased the nike+ kit and are eager to get out and run, well hold your horses. Unless you have special nike+ trainers which have a little hole cut into the sole to house the dongle you are going to have to either make or buy a ‘holster’ to attach to your laces. You can pick one of these up from ebay pretty cheaply – I have only used this one so can’t really review it but there are certainly others on the market. The dongle slides into the holder and then the holder is attached firmly to the laces. The device I have has a pivot hinge which allows the holder to be easily removed from the trainers unlike some which are weaved into the laces, this mechanism has its obvious pro’s and cons the later being the device can come lose/break off which has happened to me once so far resulting in needed to purchase a new kit.

Lets Run…

Ok so once you have got the little dongle in place and you have placed the widget into your ipod (if you have an old school ipod) you should see an option on the menu screen that says ‘Nike+ Ipod’ from this point the submenu’s should all be fairly self explanatory. Chose the run type you want to do, chose your playlist and away you go, once you have finished tap a button on your ipod and plug it into your computer.

Itunes will now do the rest of the work for you – syncing your data with the nikeplus servers which has a nice little portal to track your runs, see how others are doing etc. As the system has no concept of gps don’t expect masses of data but its a nice little automated online diary.

The Results

As the nike+ is just a glorified pedometer the distances and speeds mentioned should not be taken as completely accurate. Once calibrated they suggest to take a 10% margin of error, if you want almost 100% accuracy you will need to look at one of the gps devices out there which tend to be more expensive. If you want a relatively inexpensive first device i’d suggest looking into these. The Nike+ website is really nice and clearly a lot of thought has been put into its design and usability.

Verdict

I tend to recommend this device to all new runners, however, with iPhones apps and nokia phones starting to offer gps mapping perhaps the end is insight for the current Nike+ so who knows! If you have an ipod/iphone already goto the apple store and get the dongle for like £10 and your pretty much good to go…