…in that order. Since last Wednesdays 2 park run I have been a bit lazy on the running front but have still been reasonably active. On Saturday I booked to visit my sports masseur in the sports clinic Bluewater. Following the 10km just below my knee has been a bit painful and I thought it maybe worth getting it stretched out, before that however I managed to get out on the mountain bike for a 13 mile ride with Laura’s dad. This time he went out on his road bike so the pace was a bit faster and the ride much tougher than the last one. It looked like baring one or two hills my heart rate remained low so a nice little workout. Useful as Monday was spent at Wimbledon so missed out on my spin session!

Tuesday am I managed to fit in a swim session before work a quick visit to baker st fitness first with a gentle warmup on the treadmill, some leg rolls and then into the pool for 30mins of front crawl…

Wednesday is Serpentine running day and it was HOT! Setting off to do the 3 park, sun glasses were determinately at the ready today! We set off with the 8-8:30 pack and as usual went off too fast I think we got through the first in 745 and second in 750, sadly I couldn’t maintain this pace and gradually I got slower. I think the final mile came in at 8:15ish which wasn’t a surprise. By this point I was pretty dehydrated and my mouth was very salty. We still managed to average an 8min/mi pace but just not sustain consistency.

Thursday morning I met up with my colleague at Old St for a little jog up to work. We had worked out the route was completely straight and assuming we started off in the right direction there was no chance of getting lost. After about half a mile I was starting to doubt whether we had indeed gone off the opposite way but fortunately not! Quite a refreshing pace this morning which was nice, also normally two runs back to back is normally an issue for me but today was fine.

Not sure what the weekend has in store for me, but we shall see.

N

According to the schedule today was a 4M brisk run working out at a pace of ~11.3km/h. I’m not to sure what brisk really means, should I be able to talk? Anyway, treadmill set to my current base rate of 12km/h I ran the 6.4kms without any real issues and suspect I could possibly just hold a conversation at that pace.

Rest day tomorrow which is cool, think I may target the hills for Saturdays short run although plans may change with that and Sundays long run may have to be moved to Sat because of what day it is…

Till next time

N

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…

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.

As I’m not around to run tomorrow morning I have had to reschedule once again! Currently my training to a plan hasn’t gone all that well but I’m hoping that by doing the run during the week that this is enough. According to the schedule today was supposed to be a rest day and tomorrow a slow run of 4miles in 40mins, according to my calculations I needed to set the treadmill at sub 10km/h…

As usual, that was too slow for me so I ramped it up a little to about 10.5km but stuck to that for the 4M(6.4km) @ 1% incline. Quite a long time but as I went before work I watched the news and as they have Sky News on in the gym I got a good chuckle at the poor quality setup of that network and also the stupid things that channel will do for entertainment in particular today on the news i saw the following:

Sky News reporter Katie Stallard was forced to spend the night on Dartmoor after getting trapped in the snow. She and her film crew were rescued by a gallant 4×4 driver who towed them to the village of Princeton. (link)

To summarise, Dartmoor was cut off because of the snow, they got a few vehicles moving (mainly 4×4′s then Sky decided to send in their own reporters who then got stuck and are now cut off themselves, all for cutting edge journalism!

Next run – sunday hopefully – Long slow run of 8M according to schedule (subject to change )

It’s been some while since I updates this blog in a consistent manner, my running as well as other exercise has taken a sideline whilst I sorted out my new flat. However, sadly I can’t hide behind that excuse any more and last week the Runners World training schedule hit my inbox and I decided this year I would try my best to follow this as closely as possible. Hence, with running kit in my work bag and once again declining unhealthy lunches with colleagues, I find myself being unsociable on a treadmill…

Today’s jog wasn’t my first run of the new year, last week on the two Sundays over the Xmas break I tested my body to see whether I still had miles in my legs. I run an identical 13.5mile course with a sub 2hr half mara time which is a bit of a reassurance. Sure I have a long way to go still and I know this based on last year but I’ll be the first to admit I have been lazy since finding out I had a place and was concerned I may struggle a lot more.

The 13miler I found is a fun and interesting route, from my flat I head towards Stratford and then head around the perimeter of the 2012 Olympic Park, it’s amazing to see how far it’s come along and I suspect this route may crop up over the next few months (and years!) as I’m sure each time there will be something new! One day in the daylight I’ll take my camera over there and get some good photos, can’t wait to see the Olympics there as I think it will be amazing.
» Continue reading “Wk1 Training ‘Schedule’ Begins…”

Ok so that title maybe a little embellished but today our cruise pulled into Tunisia and as it was doing so I decided to don my running gear and do a few laps around the boat. A 30 min session was deemed long enough by me…it is a holiday after all!

5k later with a slight sweat due to the humidity I was done and guess I could proclaim to running s 5k in Africa!

Having won a hot stone massage in a raffle on day 1 I headed to that at 830 (pic isn’t me!)…that was interesting, to say the least. I have had a few massages over the last few months (mainly sports) thanks to my marathon training but this was very odd. Think I prefer massage hands to hot stones!

Anyway let the holiday continue including the eating far to much due to the 24 hour buffets!!

If anyone out there routinely reads my blog they would know that Sundays tend to be my day to do a street run. I have tried to maintain this habit since the marathon albeit a lot shorter sessions. This weekend however was to be different, booked out weeks ago for a stag do on Saturday in Ipswich then driving down the a12 at silly o’clock Sunday morning to head to Brands Hatch to watch a day of classic motor racing, I knew I wouldn’t get in a run.

I already put in a session on the treadmill on Thursday but with the weekend 10k coming up and also having a far from healthy diet this weekend (revolving around alcohol snacks and an Indian) I didn’t really want to skip another run opportunity but Mondays are also spinning days – oh the dilemma! Given the title of this blog I guess you can probably guess what I did!

At 1230 there is a spin class (annoyingly the only lunchtime spin during the week), leaving the office as late as possible to avoid using more lunch break than was really nesc I got to the class to find the instructor was different. John, who has been likened by others to one of the sissor sisters, had been replaced by Emma (I think that’s her name anyway) so I was already slightly off guard – nevermind, I have done her classes before too and I know for certain she is not a mentalist! The session today felt odd, I don’t know whether my Sunday runs loosen my joints a bit hence helping these classes, but today my legs where achy and not for lack of trying I really struggled to be able to find the strength in them to either break to much of a sweat or raise my heartrate. I normally find it difficult to get my heart rate in spinning over 170bpm but today it was a challenge to even break 160bpm. I don’t know why I found it difficult part d me thinks I should go back to basics and read up about the body, I feel perhaps the time spent messing around in biology as a kid was perhaps foolish! anyone know any good books on health, body, muscles etc?

Spin class out of the way I had to still go for a run so after a late finish at work trying to put final touches on a project I went back to the gym for session no 2, the treadmill run. I was not intending on doing anything others than the treadmill and steam room meaning it was to be a relatively short session. 5k ish was decided and like the other day I set the mode to random, which appears to mean hills and racked the speed upto 12km/h and away I went. I didn’t stay at 12 for long, over the next few kms it was to be my base speed.

The program went upto an incline of 8% and over the next few kms i fluttered between 12km-15km, I attempted 14km/h at an incline of 7.8% – that is tough! I did 5kms in 22mins and 6km at just over 26mins. That’s a fast time – I know for certain i couldn’t maintain that pace for 10kms but maybe I can based on that hit 48mins on a good day…oh well, will find out in a few days time if I really push myself!

Recently I have carried my gym kit in and out of work without using it far too many times echoing similar sentiments to the other day, suggesting it’s far to hot to be in a gym, I’m not going to lie today was very close to being the same but reasoning got the better of me and knowing not only do I have a run the weekend after next I am also out all weekend hence ruling out my usual Sunday run (maybe I can squeeze one in Sunday evening!?!).

In the changing room I was deciding what to do, should I do some weight stuff or cardio, as usual cardio won but as it was hot I said to myself I wouldn’t bother with the garmin heart rate monitor as I would put the treadmill on slow and do a light jog…

Over to the treadmill, touch autostart and away I go, speed at 11km/h. It probably took less than 30 seconds for me to stop the machine and change to one of there predefined ‘circuits’ I chose the mode they call random. Speed back to 11km/h I pushed on with this mode. It didn’t take long to get bored at that speed so I push the speed up a bit, and a bit more plus a little bit more. No longer is this a light jog and to make matters harder I was on a setting that appeared to be hills which at there peak had inclines of 6.5. Needless to say an incline of 6.5 alongside a pace of 14km/h+ is a tough challenge. I was working pretty damn hard and it’s a shame I didn’t have my heart rate monitor.

I haven’t done a treadmill run in a bit, it maybe worth heading back and doing an interval track to see if my times are changing. I’d hazzard a guess that they maybe sliding a bit due to the cut back in training I am doing now…that said I felt 14-15km/h easier than I remember in the past so who knows!

So much for a light gym session, to be honest I should know better than that. I struggle to get satisfaction out of the gym if I haven’t pushed myself, and today as ever I did indeed push myself.

Once again Bob Crow and his cronies decided that it was time for London to once again be held over a barrel and live without the London Underground for best part of 3 successive days.

Whilst in my hay day when training for the marathon I may have taken this opportunity for a run home but aware that the distance hadn’t been covered for a few months and also the knowledge that if I ran home on one of the strike days I would still have to get back again, I decided this wasn’t an option. Instead I decided that Victoria station was a manageable distance from work at 4/5 Miles depending on the route so I would run there and head back to Laura’s which required an over ground train so all was fine.

It’s funny how my running has subsided over recent months, it was clearly obvious after the morning run (run no 2) that long gone were the days where I could put in multiple runs in a short span and still do fine. I’m not going to lie by run number 4 in 36hs I really struggled. A 6k ish run suddenly was really hard. I think that it may have been a case of lack of energy amongst other things but regardless it was a tough run. » Continue reading “Tube Strikes :”