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: 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: gym, Janathon, running, spinning | Tags: Gosling sports centre, Janathon, running, spinning
Happy New Year everyone! Anyone regretting signing up for this Janathon business yet? Clearly not the people that had already been out for their morning runs and were virtuously munching fruit and updating their Twitter accounts before I’d even woken up. I may have to unfollow some of them.
At the time of writing – around 2.30pm – I have not yet been out for my slow plod around the block. This could be the shortest-lived Janathon of all.
It was all going quite well too. After the excess calorie intake over Christmas, Phil and I resolved to do something to burn off a few. We headed out for runs on Monday and Tuesday – perhaps four miles each, if that – but enough to remind our legs what’s involved. Wednesday involved a round trip via Sheppey and Rainham to visit more family, eat more cocktail sausages and cake, with no time for running. So on Thursday, we dragged our lardarses round to Gosling, our local sports centre, to take advantage of its “12 days of fitness” offer. This involves handing over 20 of your good English pounds, in return for 12 days’ unlimited use of the gym, spa and classes with a personal training session chucked in for good measure.
I’d always assumed Gosling was a local authority-run, slightly shabby but fit-for-purpose sort-of a place. Turns out, it’s much nicer. The gym is huge, there are a fair few classes including spinning, circuits, body pump, yoga and pilates. The latter are drop-in classes, and don’t appear to cost extra on top of membership, like they normally do. The spa is gorgeous – lovely warm bubbly pool with bubbles everywhere, neck fountains and an amusing flotation lounger which tickles your whole body. There are also four heat rooms – comprising a sauna, steam room, salt room and laconium.
On Thursday we did a fairly good gym session – treadmill, cross-trainer, weights and stretches – followed by a loaf in the spa. Friday brought with it an extremely high-intensity spin class – followed by, ahem, another loaf in the spa.
The 12 days offer is a great way of finding out a bit more about the facility with a view to signing up as members if we can make it work logistically with the commute. It certainly appeals as an alternative to outdoor pursuits during the cold winter months when I really do struggle to find the inclination to head out.
Unfortunately it’s closed today, so I’m going to have to find the willpower from somewhere or Janathon will have finished before it’s even started.
Filed under: British Military Fitness, running, spinning | Tags: British Military Fitness, GRIM Challenge, hampstead heath, Hellrunner, running, spinning
I’ve managed to restore some semblance of normality to my exercise regime again, after a couple of weeks of doing not a lot. I’ve been much better at doing the exercises the osteopath gave me – primarily aimed at stretching out the hip flexors and glutes – over the past week, so hopefully won’t get told off when I go back this evening.
As per my promise to the world last Tuesday evening, I did go to British Military Fitness the following day. I grabbed a blue bib when I got there, joining a slightly slower group than usual, so I didn’t overdo it. Lovely new chap called Tom took the class – he introduced us to some new forms of torture games, including one where we had to get into two teams and take turns to leopard-crawl underneath the rest of our team who were lined up in the plank position. My bum kept getting in the way – though I’m hoping that was more to do with me not doing the leopard-crawling quite right, rather than purely having a humungous arse.
Back/bottom/hip actually felt ok during and after the class, certainly no worse, so I also went spinning on Friday – fairly uneventful class, which I won’t bother elaborating on.
On Saturday, decided to run with Phil around the regular 4.5-mile circuit encompassing part of Hampstead Heath. Neither of us have done a lot of running lately, so were expecting to feel crap, but we felt surprisingly good. So on Sunday, we did the circuit again – but backwards, (as in we ran the route the other way around, rather than physically running backwards). It’s quite weird how you see things that you don’t normally see when you view them from a different perspective.
Encouraged by such progress, we’ve signed up for Hellrunner South on 15 November and GRIM Challenge on 6 December along with my much-faster-even-though-he’s-only-just-taken-up-running brother. We have been warned about the Hellrunner “Bog of Doom”, but I’m more concerned by the lack of accuracy in the phrase “10-12 miles of challenging off-road running”. It is 10 or 12 miles then? That’s a fairly significant difference on a road in good conditions, let alone when you’re carrying half your bodyweight in mud along for the ride.
I found myself at the gym slightly later than usual on Friday morning. I had a day off for a wedding later on, and thought I’d get an exercise unit in before I hit the wedding vino. I didn’t feel much like running but I’d missed the early spinning class so – with the spinning studio to myself – I decided to DIY it.
Good fun it was too – I plugged myself into my iPod, found some tracks with varying tempos and off I went. One of the instructors came in after about ten minutes and insisted on putting on the demo track and virtual reality graphics, which was just a bit distracting. I don’t need to pretend I’m cycling through the streets of London when I’m patently not even outside, and the soundtrack sticks roughly to the same tempo, whether it’s Walk Like An Egyptian or Acceptable In The 80s. I turned up my iPod and carried on in my own little world. My back didn’t feel too bad – certainly not as stiff as it did after running and British Military Fitness earlier on in the week. After 45 minutes, I was pretty much spent and just did a few upper body weights before heading to the sauna and spa.
The gym demographic changes as you go through the day – the frantic pre-work crowd has disappeared by 9am, to be replaced by the blue rinse brigade. Watching them cavort around in the pool to aqua aerobics while I sweated some more in the sauna wasa sight to behold. I think there was only one person under 60 in the entire pool.
Filed under: British Military Fitness, circuits, food, recipes, running, spinning | Tags: banana and ginger bread, banana bread, British Military Fitness, circuit training, food, Hastings, Pulse8, running, spinning, West Hampstead
I was told off this evening at British Military Fitness for not updating my blog for nearly a week. Ooops. Contrary to popular belief, I haven’t been sitting around being a lard-arse – honest.
- Friday – spinning with Matt at Pulse8. Best instructor there by a country mile, because he really uses the music to motivate the class.
- Saturday – DIY circuit training in West Hampstead. The teenagers doing community service are still painting the railings and they’ve made staggeringly little progress since last time we were there.
- Sunday – down in Hastings, a very uppy-downy four-ish mile run around the cliffs breathing in the sea air. Hard but good.
- Monday – British Military Fitness with Dan
- Tuesday – rest day
- Today – British Military Fitness with Hayley
So, rather than bore you with the finer details of those exploits, I’ll make a suggestion as to what to do with over-ripe bananas. Although I love greeny yellow young bananas, I can’t stand them when they start going brown – they actually make me want to vomit – so I frequently end up with one or two looking forlorn in the bottom of my fruit bowl. Last night I had two manky ones, and time on my hands to do some baking.
Banana and Ginger Tea Bread
- 175g self-raising flour
- 1tsp baking powder
- 40g butter or margarine
- 50g soft brown sugar
- 50g stem ginger, chopped
- 60ml milk
- 2 ripe bananas, mashed
- Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line and grease a 1lb loaf tin.
- Sift flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Rub in the butter/marg until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar.
- Add the ginger, milk and mashed bananas and mix to a soft dough.
- Spoon into the tin and bake for 40-45 minutes. Run a palette knife around the edges to loosen them, turn the tea bread onto a wire rack and leave to cool.
Easy peasy. And the result went down a storm among my team-mates at work today.
Filed under: British Military Fitness, running, spinning | Tags: British Military Fitness, exercise, juneathon, running, spinning, strength and conditioning
JogBlog made it quite clear earlier today that Juneathoners had to run on the last day of Juneathon, so I donned my trainers when I got home from work and ran about two and a half miles around the block. Not exactly a world-beating time or distance, but I was already feeling a bit stiff after British Military Fitness.
For the uninitiated, Juneathon was established by JoggerBlogger and the rules are:
- Run or exercise every day for the month of June
- Blog about it
- Visit your fellow Juneathoners’ blogs and leave a comment in support
I had a bit of a false start, but here are the stats for my Juneathon:
- Running – around 30 miles over 6 runs including 2 races
- Walking – around 14.5 miles
- British Military Fitness – seven hours’ worth
- Strength & conditioning (no. of exercises: arms – 100; legs – 150; abs – 710; plus 7.5 minutes in the plank position)
- Spinning – 90 minutes over 2 sessions
- DIY circuits – 50 minutes
- Steps at Covent Garden – 193
- Rock climbing – about half an hour’s worth
- Days without any exercise due to legitimate excuse (giving blood) – 1
- Days withouth any exercise without good reason – 4 (3 of which were in the first week of June)
It’s made me think about how I can squeeze exercise into an otherwise busy day – although I’m not sure I’ll maintain an average of six units a week. I’ve also enjoyed reading other people’s Juneathon blogs – especially JogBlog’s and Highway Kind’s – and they’ve given me the inspiration to keep going with it. Roll on next year…
Filed under: spinning | Tags: cleaning, juneathon, Michael Jackson, Pulse8, spinning
I did intend to do some Juneathon exercise yesterday evening, but failed – instead I cleared two months’ worth of paperwork and filled up a bin bag full of shredded bank statements . I think I’d rather have done the exercise actually. But it did need doing and, by the time I’d done that, it was way past my bedtime.
I repented for my sins this morning and went to a spinning class at Pulse8. Instructor was Monique and – although she’s reasonably good – her music is dreadful, with “No Limits” being the absolute low point. Mind you, it was Michael Jackson-free which was a blessing given the wall-to-wall radio, TV and internet coverage today.
If I can count cleaning the car as Juneathon exercise – then today was a double-bill, thereby making up for yesterday. In my favour, it was a fairly vigorous cleaning session to remove about 3,000 flies from the bonnet and bird shit from the boot, and I had to carry buckets of water back and forth (no hosepipe in a flat). On the other hand, I was drinking lager at the time – which means it probably doesn’t technically count as exercise.
Filed under: 5k, running, spinning | Tags: 5k challenge, Amberley, breathing, gym, Harting, running, Shoreham-on-Sea, south downs way, spinning, Steyning
I’ve been a bit quiet on the old blog recently – a combination of a busy period at work and more interesting things to do at weekends.
Haven’t made it to British Military Fitness recently because of work commitments, but have been back to the gym and done a couple of runs (early-morning 5k challenges – 28:02 last week, and 27:24 this week), some weights, stretches – and also a couple of spinning classes in the past two weeks.
Last weekend, we caught up with some friends down south and walked part of the South Downs Way (around 20 miles from Harting to Amberley on day one, and 12/13 miles from Amberley to the A283 (somewhere between Steyning and Shoreham-on-Sea on day two). We’ll go back do the rest down to Eastbourne/Beachy Head another time. Good to make the most of the weekend sunshine, and witness the 3 Forts Challenge runners on Sunday. I wouldn’t have wanted to run 27 miles around the South Downs (more up than down in many places) – so well done them.
I definitely feel fitter than I did last year – though this isn’t based on any scientific analysis. I’ve lost about half a stone since Christmas, which I’m pleased about; the walking/cycling expeditions haven’t been as hard on me physically as I thought they would be; and running hills is definitely easier than it was.
However, I continue to be frustrated at my lack of ability to run any faster. Despite some sprint training at British Military Fitness classes, and at least some effort to increase my speed through 5k and 10k challenges on the treadmill – I really do struggle to accelerate much beyond my standard ten-minute mile pace over any sort of distance.
I have noticed that I seem to puff a lot harder than people around me, and wonder if sorting out my breathing would actually unlock the speed demon inside me that is trying to get out. Any hints and tips gratefully received…
Filed under: British Military Fitness, running, spinning | Tags: Barmouth-Yarmouth, Barmouth-Yarmouth bike ride, British Military Fitness, fitnessfootwear, hampstead heath, running, spinning
It took a few days to recover from the Barmouth to Yarmouth bike ride, to the extent that I did nothing on the exercise front for almost a week and took the opportunity to rest.
Back into some semblance of a routine since then:
Sunday, 19 April – 4.5-mile run around Hampstead Heath (tried out the new shoes from Fitnessfootwear – more to come on those in due course)
Monday, 20 April – British Military Fitness class
Wednesday, 22 April – British Military Fitness class
Friday, 24 April – spinning class
Saturday, 25 April – same loop around Hampstead Heath
Today, skipped the planned run and went to watch the 35,000 more disciplined ladies and gents running around London. It was a weird feeling – last time I saw the London Marathon course, I was running it back in 2004. I’d suffered an injury about eight weeks before race-day but, with £2,500 in sponsorship pledges, I refused to pull out and ran with a dodgy knee. It hurt. A lot. And I swore I’d never do it again. Yet, watching it today, I felt a twinge of something like envy as I watched this year’s participants, whether they were running for a place in the record books, for a lost or loved one, or just for their own sense of achievement. Never say never?
Right now, I wouldn’t be up to it. Not by a long way. I can’t shake off an almost constant feeling of tiredness since the bike ride and I’ve still got a bit of a sniffle (or maybe just hay fever?). Another early night beckons.
