Filed under: 5k, gym, half marathon training, Reading Half Marathon, running | Tags: 5k challenge, half marathon training, Reading Half Marathon, run, running
After a two-week period of very little exercise – I managed only a couple of gym sessions featuring the 5k challenge (I’m down to 26:47, which isn’t brilliant but is ok after being unwell) – it’s approaching decision-time on the Reading half marathon. I so desperately want to break two hours but with various bugs, cold weather and a holiday coming up, this might not be my year! Do I run it and accept it won’t be a PB and just try to enjoy it, or do I defer my place to next year and hope I’m better prepared?
Sean (Mr Audiofuel) and Angela reckoned I should give it a go anyway. Good to meet them both in the flesh for the first time on Tuesday evening, though the less said about the 8k run up and down the canal near Sean’s, the better, quite honestly. After one of those days at work that featured “lunch” at 4.30pm, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind for it! But Sean’s post-run pimped up pizza and a glass or two of wine more than made up for it. Thanks guys.
I followed up with a couple more gym sessions this week – one light one with my Mum on Friday encouraging how to use some new machines to help her recover after a knee op, and one heavier session featuring a good sweaty spin and some leg weights yesterday.
This morning, Phil and I tackled a longer run – 7.8 miles incorporating a little bit of off-road near where we live. Apart from puffing up the horrible hill which kicked in at about the six-mile point and a little twinge in my left knee which is becoming a regular thing, I felt reasonably good. Time was 1:15:31 which, if I could sustain it for 13 miles, would bring me in at around 2:04 or 2:05.
I’d feel happier with more than three more weeks to train, but I feel slightly more positive about it than I did a couple of weeks ago. Sooooo, I’m in…as long as I don’t fall over/get run over/keel over before then.
Filed under: 5k, food, gym, running | Tags: beef Stroganoff, Cafe Pushkin, Moscow, running, Russia, treadmill
I spent the first part of this week in Russia with work – Moscow this time for a summit with clients and their Russian agency. It’s a long way to go for a day-long meeting, and you seem to spend another two days getting there and back, but I’m awfully lucky to be able to say I’ve been.
On the second night, our colleagues had arranged a pub crawl with a difference, taking in the Metro, a seedy little bar full of men where the vodka arrived in tumblers, Red Square/Kremlin walls/Lenin’s mausoleum and a traditional cafe with local snackage to accompany more vodka. We ended up in a smart restaurant – the Cafe Pushkin – where I had beef Stroganoff. Proper Russian, me.
I confess I offloaded some of the vodka on my colleagues as I really struggle to drink neat spirits, and took it reasonably easy on the wine. I even bailed early so I could get some much-needed kip while some of the others ended up in a bar snorting sambuca. I felt very smug the next morning, and went to the hotel gym for a blast on the treadmill before pick-up.
(For the record – 5k challenge in 27:15, compared to 27:05 the previous Saturday in the UK).
Unfortunately, I have not been rewarded with good karma. Instead, I’ve been struck down with a horrible tummy bug. I made it into work yesterday, lasted an hour and gave up to come home to bed for the rest of the day. Today, I’ve worked, but haven’t left the house. Phil’s cooking curry and drinking beer, and I couldn’t be less interested in consuming either, let alone in getting up off the sofa.
I deduce from this two things:
1) next time, I might as well stay out.
2) this half-marathon training really isn’t going too well.
Filed under: gym, half marathon training, Reading Half Marathon, running | Tags: Reading Half Marathon, running
So after complete failure on day 28, day 29 wasn’t much better. I booked a gym induction, but felt rubbish – a little warm-up on the cross-trainer and treadmill, followed by a few pathetic weights. One quite nifty feature of the machines in the gym is a TDS key that you can pop into the machines, which records your distance, timings, weights, etc. You can download your workout to a kiosk point, and view your progress over time. It can also be linked to a fitness programme – no cheating!
The following day, Sunday, I felt a bit better and agreed to a run with Phil and my brother. We planned a seven-mile route that I could duck out of if I felt bad. But I didn’t – felt surprisingly good, and enjoyed the run with my brother. He’s offered to help me crack two hours at the Reading Half – and I’m inclined to listen to him, with a 1:36 PB under his belt. I laboured a bit on a couple of hills, and let the boys run off for a sprint finish to the house, but on the whole felt pretty good. Not a record-breaking time, but not too bad considering I still wasn’t feeling brilliant.
Distance: 7.15 miles
Time: 1:07
Roughly a 2:02 half marathon then – need to knock about 20-odd seconds off each mile. to break two hours. Doesn’t sound so bad when you put it like that.
And so, to the last day of Janathon. Day 31 was a busy one at work, so just did my normal walking commute and didn’t make it to the gym.
I think I’m pleased with my performance over the course of the month: I definitely did more exercise that I would normally do, tried out a few new classes, and it’s helped me kick-start the new year with some enthusiasm. I’m not sure if was humanly possible to read all of the Janathon blogs, but I’ve discovered a few new good ones that I’ll add to my blogroll and regular reading list. And very well done to the winners - who are the lucky recipients of various goodies from Audiofuel and TalkTalk.
Source: http://www.old-picture.com
I had the luxury of a day off work on Monday, and was able to spend it exactly as I wanted. I spent two hours tidying the house, hoovered right through and even Cleaned The Bathroom. Given that I absolutely bloody hate cleaning, I felt quite saintly by the end of all that. Then, after all that bleach-fuelled exertion, I took myself off to the gym for a spinning class.
Daytime at the gym in the week is a very different beast to the weekend. Without putting too finer point on it, I was probably the youngest person there by some margin. As I scanned the room while setting up my bike, I wondered if my spinning class-mates got the message about it being an exercise session rather than a craft class.
As it happens, it was really good. The beauty of spinning is that you can make it as easy or as difficult as you like by decreasing or increasing the resistance. So I loaded on the resistance, and felt as though I’d had as good a workout as any other, despite it being a 35-minute session rather than the normal 45. And the instructor stayed on for another 10 minutes to guide everyone through some free weights.
And the silver-haired gym bunnies around me? Absolutely fine. If I’m still spinning at 60 or 70 years of age, I’ll be well pleased. Good on ‘em.
The rest of my day off was spent drinking tea, eating biscuits and doing a jigsaw puzzle with my 86-year-old Nan. She’s as bright as a button, cheeky to boot, and amazingly mobile. If this is what old age is like, bring on retirement….
Janathon activity: 35 mins spinning, 10 mins weights
Filed under: 5k, gym, Janathon, running, walking | Tags: 5k, commuting, Janathon, King's Cross, running, walking in London
I seem to have some catching up to do on the blog. It’s been a busy week, with trips to Staines, Warrington and Huddersfield. I know, the glamour…
However, in between times, I reckon I have mastered the art of efficient walking down busy streets in London and through a packed King’s Cross at rush hour. One must walk quickly and purposefully with eyes – and this bit is important – fixed on some unspecified point in the middle distance. One must not, under any circumstances, make eye contact with another commuter coming in the other direction. This is a sign of weakness and almost always results in having to change the course of one’s own trajectory, therefore reducing efficiency.
In other Janathon news, my vital statistics for the working week:
Monday – gym for around 50 minutes, incorporating 5k in 28:08 mins
Tuesday – three miles walking
Wednesday – four miles walking
Thursday – four miles walking + gym for 1 hour
Friday – four miles walking
Filed under: food, gym, running | Tags: food, gym, interval training, paella, running, treadmill
Day 16 in the Janathon house…over half-way then Janathoners.
After a really rather tasty paella-cum-risotto (didn’t have any paella rice) complete with the biggest tiger prawns you’ve ever seen in your life from Costco, I slept like a log. Turned out, the paella (followed by bagels for breakfast) was ample fuel for a reasonably hard gym session.
I took a leaf out of Phil’s book and opted for ten-minute blocks of exercise:
10 mins cross-trainer
10 mins interval training on the treadmill (8-13km/hour)
10 mins bike
10 mins weights
10 mins abs
10 mins stretch
We’ve signed up for an initial three months after our trial over Christmas. Just gotta make sure we use it once the novelty factor wears off. The spa currently provides a more than adequate incentive, but it’ll still be tough to get there regularly after a day’s work and an hour’s commute home.
But only at the Body Pump class and the candlelit swim session. Sadly, the Pump class was already underway when Phil and I arrived due to me getting muddled up with the timings, so we headed to the gym.
But someone had swiped all the girls, leaving a load of boys covered in tattoos, pumping iron in front of the mirror, and emitting more grunts than a week at Wimbledon. They’re a curious shape, these chaps – massive shoulders, bulging biceps and really teeny tiny legs. Like big inverted triangles.
Quite fascinating to observe though. So after my ten-minute warm-up on the cross-trainer, I decided to join them – no doubt irritating the hell out of them by putting the seats up as high as they would go and putting the weights down significantly lower. I followed that with a good abs session, and then had a wobble about on the Bosu.
Janathon activity: gym session (mainly weights)
Time: 45 minutes
Filed under: food, gym, spinning | Tags: beef, cars, cross-trainer, food, gym, spinning, swiss ball, toy story
There was some energetic playtime involving cast members from Toy Story 3 and Cars with a six- and two-year-old on Sunday afternoon, but unfortunately it didn’t really make up for eating our bodyweight in beef during the course of Saturday evening (steak and chips) and Sunday lunch (roast beef and all the trimmings).
So, having driven home from Leicester via Rugby, we hauled ourselves and our heavy tummies to the gym. I started off with ten minutes on the cross-trainer, then did my own little solo spinning session on one of the old aerobikes in the main gym for about 25 minutes, followed by a little bit of Swiss ball action. Short and sweet.
Janathon activity: gym-based
Time: 40 minutes
Filed under: 10k, gym, half marathon training, Janathon, running | Tags: 10k, gym, Janathon, running, treadmill
Cold and gloomy again Saturday morning, so sought sanctuary in the gym. Thought I might reinstate the 5k and 10k challenges, and completed 10k in 59:02. Some way to go to break that two-hour mark at the Reading half marathon, but at least I’m building up my mileage.
Janathon activity: 10k run
Time: 59:02
Filed under: gym, Janathon | Tags: Gosling, Janathon, kickboxing, Rocky, Sylvester Stallone
Source: www.dvdverdict.com
It was seeing half the class taking their shoes off that gave me – metaphorically speaking – cold feet about trying kickboxing for the first time. As they all peeled off their socks and the instructor started winding tape round his hands and wrists, Phil and I inched back towards the door. Several other people (still wearing shoes) appeared to do the same thing.
The blokes looked hard; the girls looked even worse – the type that did rugby at University, who could probably flatten someone like me with slap in the face. I didn’t fancy my chances.
Anyway, we didn’t quite manage to escape before the warm up – so off we went, jogging up and down the hall, then did some sets of press-ups, crunches and burpees (thank goodness for British Military Fitness, as I was the only girl doing full rather than half-box press-ups).
I partnered with Phil, and he started off with the gloves and me with the pads you strap onto your hands. We did various sequences – jabs, hooks, rolls, front kicks, roundhouse kicks and a peculiar move that involved lifting the knee almost in a semi-circle, before kicking with the outside of the foot. I felt like my hips were being dislocated, and probably looked as if they were too. However, Mr Instructor told me I had a “nice little (roundhouse) kick”. Check me out.
Holding the body pads was a little more tricky – the first time Phil hit it, I almost winded myself, so there must be a knack to it that I wasn’t aware of. And he wasn’t even trying that hard – some of the guys and gals in the room would have absolutely floored me. Best not go together after we’ve had a row, that’s for sure.
The time went really quickly – the 55-minute class ended up being more like 70 minutes, and we didn’t even do a proper warm-down. I was sweating profusely by the end, and I reckon I’ll feel muscles I didn’t know I had in my shoulders and groin tomorrow. Would definitely go again!
Janathon activity: four miles (walking commute) & kickboxing class
Time: just over two hours in total
