Filed under: GRIM Challenge, circuits, running | Tags: circuit training, GRIM Challenge, running
Phil’s ankle was sore this morning, so a run was out of the question in order for him to be in with a chance of running GRIM Challenge next weekend. I’ve got to be honest, I wasn’t too disappointed not to be doing the uphill slog for two miles to the Heath.
However, after a lush meal at tapas-style Indian Imli last night – and to be in with any kind of chance of squeezing into the glam little black number I’ve bought for the Christmas party – I had to do something today. So we did a gentle jog up to the park and then a DIY circuits session. We used trees, benches and lampposts as stations, and took turns to dictate the exercise – which we then did for a minute before moving onto the next one.
We did tricep dips, press-ups, sit-ups, burpees, lunges, squats, the plank, spotty dogs, back raises, horrid press-ups with feet up on the bench, a bit of sparring and ran backwards round the park. A man out for a jog said “well done” to us as we embarked on another set of sit-ups and some middle-aged people on their way to church looked at us as if we were insane. We managed to avoid any dog poo.
Filed under: Pulse8, gym, running | Tags: gym, Pulse8, running, treadmill
Missed British Military Fitness yesterday as I was feeling a bit under the weather, but felt sufficiently better to go back to the gym today. Ran for 45 minutes on the treadmill, but didn’t get an accurate distance because I paused it part-way through to talk to an instructor (“oooh” she said “are you back into the swing of things?” – code for “haven’t seen you for a while”). Can’t imagine it was more than a standard 7.5km – averaging out at 10km or 6 miles per hour – but after Sunday I was just glad to be still standing at the end of it. No further tantrums either.
Treadmill gets bad press among runners, but I quite like it sometimes for the following reasons:
- It’s warm in the gym.
- And dry.
- The people-watching possibilities are almost endless. Spotted this morning: super-fit young lady running at 17.9km/hour – I thought she was going to go pinging off the back and across the gym; man on exercise bike wearing combats, cap, hoodie (with hood up) cycling with his arms folded; man singing to himself on the treadmill; man jabbering away on his mobile while half-heartedly lifting dumbells with the other hand.
- I stretch properly afterwards.
- The showers are lovely.
- I always gym it in the morning, and am way more productive at work that day.
Occasionally I forget to take my trousers, which is rather inconvenient, but all in all it’s a good start to the day. Off to spinning tomorrow…
Filed under: British Military Fitness, GRIM Challenge, cycling, gym, running, spinning | Tags: British Military Fitness, GRIM Challenge, hampstead heath, muffins, running, spinning, St Albans
Headed up to Snorbs to meet my little brother for a British Military Fitness class on Saturday morning as planned. Dad came along too – out of genuine interest rather than a desire to embarrass his two sproglets – and luckily the camera was playing up so the episode was not recorded for posterity.
It was a really tough class – much more running sprinting than my normal class and fewer press-ups, sit-ups and burpees which tend to be relentless in Reading. It was a bigger group in general, so I went straight into a group of all reds, meaning there were no blues to keep me company when I was lagging. I struggled to keep up for much of the session, and when it came to trying to carry anther girl the length of a football pitch in a fireman’s lift, I felt like crying.
It strikes me as rather odd that I’ve been running for more than eight years yet this is definitely the weakest link in my BMF classes. And – despite the title of this blog – I do go off running periodically, which is why I take up other things from time to time. The gym, circuits, spinning, cycling, swimming (rarely) and BMF add variety.
Nonetheless, I’ve got the eight-mile GRIM Challenge coming up in two weeks’ time, so I did need to get out on Sunday. Phil and I headed up to Hampstead Heath for a six-miler. My legs were already pretty sore after the über-difficult BMF class the previous day, though I was happy enough for the first couple of miles which is all uphill. That’s progress I can put down to the strength training – a couple of months ago, I struggled to do that without stopping to catch my breath.
But, my newfound power did not last long, and before long I was throwing a bit of a tantrum because I was struggling again. Firstly, I was annoyed because I’d expected to feel much much better having been doing the BMF classes (despite actually not doing a lot of distance running recently); but secondly, I was irrationally pee’d off because Phil didn’t appear to be in the slightest bit uncomfortable and claims to have done hardly any exercise recently. Hmmm – I wonder if he’s been putting in secret hours at the gym.
The reality, of course, is that I just need to rack up a few more miles, and will enter a few more races in the New Year to force myself out to put one foot in front of the other.
In the meantime, I’m going to make some muffins.
Filed under: British Military Fitness, running gear | Tags: British Military Fitness, running gear, St Albans
I’m off to my home town, St Albans, tonight – and plan to do a British Military Fitness class with my little brother and his local group tomorrow morning. I’ve bought a new pair of Salomon running tights especially. It’s due to be a bit parky.
Anyway, our parents have just informed us that they intend to come and watch the class. My brother are I are approaching 30 and 32 years of age respectively.
Is it rather sweet that they still take such an interest in our sporting pursuits?
Or just a bit embarrassing?
Filed under: British Military Fitness, Tang Soo Do, spinning | Tags: British Military Fitness, Tang Soo Do
Forgive me bloggers, for I have sinned. It has been 16 days since my last confession post. And in that time, I’ve done only three British Military Fitness classes, one Tang Soo Do class and one spinning class – and eaten a lot of French food during a rather lovely long weekend in Lille. I no longer even dare to stand on the scales.
Tang Soo Do was fun – some kind of Korean martial arts thing; lots of kicking, punching and yelling. If I had the time, I’d pursue it a bit further – but then, if I had the time I’d also learn pole dancing, tennis and how to swim better. So it’s in a queue for the time being.
Instead, I was in the office at 7.15pm this morning and left at 6.40pm – only just about made it to BMF (some of the instructors are very strict about timekeeping). Crap day actually, but good to have a run about in the fresh air at the end of it.
Now, back to my pile of ironing. Rock and roll.
Filed under: 1500m run, British Military Fitness, fitness assessment, running | Tags: 1500m run, British Military Fitness, fitness assessment, running
My fitness assessment results still hadn’t been posted on the British Military Fitness website this morning and – thinking I might have fallen off the bottom of the scale – I emailed them. A nice man called Keith emailed me back immediately, and sent the results back within an hour.
Hi Jo
Here are the results of your fitness test.
1.5km run 8min27sec 17 points
Press-ups 37 reps 54 points
Sit-ups 34 reps 33 points
Burpees 35 reps 76 points
Shuttle run 76 secs 100 points
——–
280 points
Good score Jo, that is definitely a red bib result.
Well done – see you in the park!
That was slightly surprising, I must admit – blue is for novices, red is intermediate and green is advanced. So when I reported for class this evening, it wasn’t without some apprehension. Iasked the instructor if there had been a mistake. He said not. So I donned a red bib – accepted a few congratulations from my friendly BMF classmates and jogged off in line getting gently soaked in the drizzle.
The instructor was a bit mean. After a hard “warm-up”, and some shuttle runs mixed up with various exercises, he split us into groups by colour, put us on three corners of a square in the middle of one of the football pitches – then told us to do 10/15/20 press-ups before moving onto the next corner to do 9/14/19 press-ups, then onto the next corner for 8/13/18, and so on. The idea was to catch the next group, at which point the group was out. We might have only been doing five more press-ups than the blues, but that’s five more EVERY SINGLE TIME. I could barely pick myself up off the floor by the end. Then we had to repeat the exercise with star jumps. Cue wobbly legs, and a funny looking recovery run to the other end of the pitch and back.
After a very short water break, we jogged off to the other side of the park in two lines. On a shout of “contact” we had to run away from the line and hit the deck; “reorg” run back into our lines; “sniper” hit the deck and commando crawl (elbows and knees, bum down); and – for greens only – run away from the lines and do five press-ups on the “enemy” call. Please let me never be a green.
We got to the edge of the park which has 10 trees lining the fence, did five press-ups/sit-ups/squat thrusts, ran to the next tree and repeated the process – until we got to the tenth tree. I really couldn’t move my shoulders now…but there was just time for a mini-game of touch rugby. I was utterly clueless. Didn’t understand the rules, took possession of the ball once and ran in completely the wrong direction, fannied around for a bit on the outskirts of the action, decided to try one more time for the ball, got a bit scared when it headed in my direction…and completely missed it. This is why I don’t play ball games.
The good news is that the pain is starting to pay off. I tackled a six-mile run on Sunday, and found the initial two miles uphill a little easier than I had done previously. I’ll try to keep going with the red team (one blue-bibbed bloke admitted he had passed the test to join the reds but found the red workout too much) and see if I can improve my test results next time. One of the interesting things is that my 1.5km run was actually my worst score – well within the blue parameters – yet I’ve been running for years. I need to learn to run faster than I ever have before.
