Running and Weight and Stuff

So how's my running going? It's going fine thanks, I'm still managing 6min/km over 5km... sadly though I ended up moving boxes and furniture instead of running the fun run I was sort of training for last weekend.

I decided that the move was more important, and more significantly Milord had given up a rare golf game opportunity to move stuff so it seemed very rude of me to disappear for most of Sunday for a run! He encouraged me to go but I had a feeling it would come back and bite me in the butt the next time he felt cranky.

You know how it goes.

The physical work on the weekend was probably harder than running 14km in the end, and I have only just stopped hurting! I lost a bit of weight last week and started this week on 69kg - woohoo! I'm up from that today but I feel bloated so I'm ignoring that reading (denial!). I feel a bit flabby around the middle and that is probably because I've been hitting the snooze button too much and missing my morning sit-ups!

In spite of that I'm giving myself a rest week from the gym and have been having lunch with Milord (we need quality time away from home) or else we dash to the house and check on the tradesmen. Yesterday we went to have a word with the tiler to try to convince him to finish the bathroom before Saturday.

I may be bathing in a bucket for a few days.

Fine, whatever. I'm over stressing about it. Bring it on!

Running etc

Yay - I've done 5km in 30min! Goaaal!

It was jolly hard though. I "hit the wall" at 20min and I really didn't think I'd manage to keep my speed up. I talked myself into at least finishing 4km before slowing down. Then I saw I only had to keep it up for 6min more and pushed on. My legs were like lead at the end and it took 5 minutes of cooling off to get my heart rate down to something sensible!

I'm very pleased. Now I can try to go faster, or uphill, or both perhaps! I have to keep it interesting or else I know I'll stop going. The best part about running 5km in 30min is that I have more cooling off time before I have to get back to work - 7 minutes more than when I first ran it!

Hmm what else in the weight/fitness arena? I resorted to living on juice for a couple of days this week to detox a little and kick some weight because I broke 70kg in the wrong direction over the weekend. I cheated a lot though - purists would be horrified - and bought all my juices from the supermarket! 1 litre of fresh juice in the morning, 1 litre of V8 veggie juice in the afternoon, 1 litre of water in between and miso soup for dinner. I dropped half a kilo and I'm sure just being off wine and starch and dairy was good for me. I may have had far too much salt though - I didn't realise how much was in the V8 until too late, and miso is definitely salty.

Now, as I say at least once a week, back onto weightwatchers! I really would like to look fab at a friend's wedding in October, and that's also the start of our sailing holiday. Bikini time!

Hard to think about bikinis today... it's cold and wet and blustery. The last few World Youth Day hangers-on look tired and cold and bedraggled. Poor things. When I come out of the office to head home to my cosy house I see them loitering about in the dark with their "pilgrim passports" slung around their necks. I keep getting visions of Paddington Bear standing alone with his suitcase and a note saying "Please look after this bear. Thank you".

Bless...
Now go home!

Running...

This time last year I was a bit broken. I'd overtrained for the 14km City to Surf fun run and it turns out I was using the wrong shoes too so my right ankle gave up on me. Every time it seemed to clear up I'd run on it again because I was desperate to train, and I'd make it worse. Then I did the fun run anyway and walked it, and discovered that it was fine to walk the thing, most people do anyway, and it is so busy that I would struggle to run much regardless.

This year I'm taking my training far less seriously and I'm having rather good results. All I'm trying to do is run 5km in 30 minutes - I reckon that will get me fit enough to handle the walk-jog-walk I expect the City to Surf to be. If you're a real runner (Hi Dad!) you'll know that this is actually a very slow pace. Not for me it isn't! Today I did the 5km in 32 minutes, my best so far and 1min off last week. My average heart rate was 170bpm. (Yes way. Apparently some of us just have a nutty exertion bpm. My resting rate is normal, thanks)

Last year I remember bewailing the fact that I wasn't losing weight or size in spite of gaining fitness. Don't give me the "muscle weighs more than fat" argument, I don't buy it. The real reason I don't lose weight is because I reward myself for doing well on the treadmill! I did it a minute ago when I got back to the office: "I'll just add feta cheese to this tuna salad because I'll have run off lots of calories".

Sure tasted good though! Now I'm trying to resist the siren call of milo with hot full cream milk... aargh

Weight Update

So yah. I've was a bit uninspired last month. I suppose I'm lucky I didn't gain much, but I sure didn't lose much either!

Weight Graph June:


Weight Graph to Date:


I've started doing sit-ups and push-ups before work in the mornings after my shower, as I just don't seem to make it to the gym lately. I can now do 5 full push-ups, followed by 20 from my knees. My goal is 20 full ones. I do a variety of sit-ups: crunches, obliques, leg-lifts and back extensions. This takes about 15 minutes while Milord has a lie-in. Lazy bugger - what is it with men and sit-ups? They'll jog, cycle, do weights, but rein in the belleh? Pffft.

I walk to and from work most days, which adds up to about 8km per day several times a week I suppose. I can't wait for the evenings to get a bit lighter though, the walk home is boring in the dark!

And I'm trying to run 5km in 30 minutes on the treadmill - I do this every Thursday lunchtime. Today I did the 5km in 33min - down from 37min 4 weeks ago. If/when I get to 30min I'll work on getting my heart-rate down, and once that's reasonable I'll play with more speed and inclines and stuff. It is 5 weeks to the 14km fun-run, but if it's anything like last year there simply won't be enough space to run around the walkers so I'll be lucky to break into a jog from time to time. My 5km training will probably be enough!

Gyms

Weight today: 69.5kg
Actually I was expecting it to be worse after my weekend of excess! So I'm not too upset.

I have got to get back into my gym routine. I used to go religeously 3 times a week, but now I find myself looking for something else to do instead. Lunch with Milord, running errands, even just sitting reading blogs!

I think my problem is... I don't like my gym! It's just too busy and crowded. I like to do floor work for toning so I need a space for my mat, ball and free weights, and the available space is tiny and being fought over by other people including personal trainers and their clients. Large sweaty men invade my personal space and it's just too uncomfortable! Last week I only went once because it was my "treadmill" day - I'm running 5km once a week and trying to get my time down (36 min down from 37 min, yes I know that's pathetic, I'm working on it!).

There is another branch of my gym a few blocks away which is much bigger. I think I will go and check it out today - apparently it has a "Ladies Only Training Area". I don't mind working out with blokes but that does sound rather nice! Plus they have yoga and pilates - good for toning and I can count on a space in the class if the work out areas are full.

Weight Update

Another month, another update… eek not good. No excuses, I’m just struggling with my willpower lately! Down a smidgen, but far from convincingly…

I have just signed up for the City to Surf 14km fun run in August again. Hopefully that will be a decent incentive for me to get out and do some exercise on the weekends. We have been hibernating a bit during winter, watching far too much TV and eating and drinking too much, which undoes any good achieved during the week.

Last year I overdid my training a bit and hurt my ankle, so I’ll keep things sensible this time. I’ve also worked out that the running shoes I had last year were crap, because the moment I replaced them my ankle trouble cleared up almost immediately! That will teach me to buy cheap running shoes!

Milord has bad knees so he won’t be joining me for the fun run, but I hope I can talk him into picking up our Bay challenge again. I really used to enjoy racing him, and it was a huge boost to know he was chasing me!

Weight Graph May:



Weight Graph to Date:

City2Surf 2007

Yesterday Gillian and I did the City2Surf from the centre of Sydney to Bondi beach. Sadly I can't say that we "ran" it, because my ankle was giving me grief so after about half an hour we walked. Our time was 2h21 over 14km (that's 141 minutes, just over 10 minutes per km

It was a lot of fun in spite of my ankle, people really get into the spirit of the fun run. There were 64000+ runners and walkers and pram-pushers, a lot of folk in costumes, and loads of spectators and encouragement. It was extremely well organised too - plenty of porta-loos and water tables and ambulances and marshals.

The weather was stunning, up to 20 C with a cool breeze. Once you leave the city the route goes through some lovely expensive suburbs and follows the coast along Rose Bay, then up a hill and down again with views of the sea into Bondi. When we got to Bondi we bought a bottle of wine and a hot dog and sat on the sand enjoying the atmosphere. Then jumped on one of the myriad free busses back to the city, grabbed cheese and biscuits and went back to my house for a shower, wine and nibbles...

I'm a little stiff today, and my ankle is a bit sore but not nearly as bad as I was expecting. After all the food and drink yesterday the scale was pretty mean to me this morning, and I am now determined to get back into my diet and gym routine, although I'll be doing the bike not the treadmill until I stop hurting.

Gillian is now trying to talk me into the 9km Harbour Bridge run in 5 weeks time. I'll see how my ankle shapes up by the end of the month ;-)

Thursday Blues

Nearly the end of a very long, frustrating and boring week.

I have injured my ankle over the last couple of weeks. I think that with a combination of running training, personal training, and a weekly physio session to correct a misalignment in my right leg that my pt noticed, I have seriously overworked my right ankle and it is on strike. I have tendonitis, which is simply inflamation of the tendons running around the right-hand bump of my ankle towards my toes. So walking is painful, running is impossible, and getting down a flight of stairs is ridiculous.

I am not impressed.

This actually started nearly two weeks ago, when I ran a double Bay and knocked 4 minutes off my time, getting it down to 108 minutes. I was so chuffed with myself, and took the slight ache in my right ankle the next day in my stride (pun intended)! Then at the physio on Monday he got me onto one-(right)legged leg presses, which are a lot harder than they sound, and my ache got worse. Tuesday I had my personal training session, and the ache got worse. On Wednesday I ran speed intervals on the treadmill for half an hour, then went off to do squats and leg presses, and by Thursday I had a bit of a hobble!

I nursed it through the weekend we spent in Brisbane with Milord's mum, and by Monday it was mostly ok and I went to the physio again and he had me doing one-legged things again... and then of course I went for a run! Gillian and I ran for half an hour at lunchtime (she is now fitter and faster than me!), stopped, stretched, and as we began to walk back to the office I almost fell over because my ankle had siezed up. It was agonising!

Since then I have stopped physio, personal trainer and gym altogether. I have 9 days to go before the city2surf and I am determined to do it so I have to get my inflammation cured by then.

But it's so frustrating when you are used to at least four exercise sessions a week to have none! And when I am bored or frustrated, I eat. Comfort food. So now I am sore, fat and annoyed. Normally when I feel fat or annoyed I exercise... this is a vicious circle! Grumble grumble rhubarb...

I feel really really blue and blah.

On the bright side I have m'Lord home now for the first weekend in a while. He has a horrible cold that is driving me into the spare room at night, but that should be gone by the weekend. Ideally I'd go running on the weekend, but snuggling up to my honey is a good alternative!

City2Surf

I need to do something drastic about my weight gain. I was heavy before winter started, and now that the days are short, and cold, and wet, I've gone into hibernation mode. Cue lots of eating and sleeping and long hot baths with a bottle of wine within reach. Slowly but surely I am packing on the blubber, and it must stop!

To this end I have convinced my friend Gillian to run the City2Surf Sydney fun run with me on the 12th August. It is 14km (about 9 miles), so really only twice around the Bay which I can do easily if very slowly at the moment.

Gillian is a petite, slender, energetic Irish girl with oodles of energy and the metabolism of a teenage boy. She has to eat all day long or else she'll waste away and faint. I, on the other hand, could probably forgo food for a month and not lose a kilo, my metabolism is so slow. (Milord has the same problem, and we joke that if we crashed on a desert island we'd still be wobbling around just fine after everyone else had died of starvation! And we'd have the resources to run away from them when they decided to eat us...)

I am not, and have never been, much of a runner. My heart rate seems to be faster than most folks when I run which means I have to run a lot slower than them or else I die. I wear a heart rate monitor and don't let my bpm go over a certain value, at which point I can sort of chat... apparently that's the sign of where you should be! It serves me well, I can go without stopping for ages and don't feel too awful afterwards.

Today Gillian and I went out for our first training run at lunchtime. There are a few parks near our office, so we picked a flat, roundish one and ran around the outside of it a few times to the great amusement of the blokes working on the new playground. I did my usual slow jog while Gillian sort of ran circles around me... she says she struggles to run so slow. I was having visions of "the tortoise and the hare". Be that as it may, she was soon puffed while I gently plodded on and we had to drop to a walk every so often.

We jogged twice around the park (in 20 min), then walked around it a final time. Including walking to and from the park we were out for 45 min. We're going to go again on Friday if it isn't raining, and then on Sunday we'll have a go at jogging the Bay.

By the 12th August we need to be able to run twice around the Bay without stopping! That's 7.5 weeks away and I'm sure we can do it ;-)

The Bay Challenge

Not far from where I live there is a well maintained pedestrian and bicycle track that runs along the edge of Iron Cove bay. It incorporates a bridge which turns the track into a circuit approximately 7km long, and is known as "The Bay".

For the last few months Milord and I have been having a race around it almost every Sunday - he does three circuits on his bike, and I jog it. I'm not much of a jogger, so it's jolly hard work, and although Milord enjoys cycling 21km is a long way!

The first time we did it I mostly walked, and finished in 61 minutes, and Milord managed 58 minutes. For the next several weeks I slowly knocked my time down and now I jog more than I walk and I am pretty close to breaking 50 minutes. I actually managed to beat Milord the last couple of times!

I'll cut him a bit of slack though, as he had a nasty throat and nose operation in February that put him out of action for over a month, and then we went away on holiday, so he's not been training much. From May he has no excuse though!