Hill work

If you look very closely at this picture, at the bottom of the path is a blur of neon yellow. That is Sean at the bottom of the hill we just ran up and down a dozen times. For those of you that haven’t met Sean in real life, he’s quite a tall person. It has been noted by several people that he’s generally a large sized example of a human, I tell you this to point out just how bloody steep that hill is.Unfortunately the slalom stage is even steeper and further – yay!

So today was a trot of about 1.6 miles down down to the park, then 12 runs up the hill. The first person, in this case Sean, ran up the hill and dropped a dog lead. The second person, yours truly, then ran to the lead and picked it up. Then running either further or dropping it a bit nearer the bottom on the return journey. We mixed it up, some longer runs, some short and faster, for a very relative definition of faster. We then walked  the 1.6 miles back and are currently watching the pre-match punditry for Super Saturday.

Later today will come a very important part of the training, an event such as Tough Guy requires an holistic approach. This is why we’re mixing up running, hill work, core improvement and other aerobic exercise. The other element is training for the beers will drink once we complete the course, today will be an intensive session to help prepare for just that.

Edited to add crop of zoomed in image as Sean didn’t believe he was actually in it. The doggie happily running up the hill is Harley.

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The Hangover: Mk II

So yesterday was good. It involved planks, crunches, lat raises and pizza and cupcake, and prosecco. Which means today involved a Maccy D’s for breakfast and dirty duck for lunch. It also involved, due to Sean’s lack of forward planning, a train trip to Somerset. Which meant the one thing it didn’t involve was any exercise.

However, having read Sean’s most recent post about his total lack of exercise during his week in Cornwall. I’m feeling quite relaxed, or at least not guilty.

So I’m currently at the Gaffney’ country house in deepest darkest Somerset and the main plan is to watch the rugby tomorrow. The plan before that is to get up, have a light brekkie and then go do hill training. Then have a hobbitish second breakfast and then watch (please dear god) Italy stuff Wales, Scotland stuff Ireland and England stuff France*.

In a world of infinite possibilities, some of these things are bound to happen. I fear the only one that will actually  happen is the world of hurt that the hill involves.

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Sean & Fiona – 7th March

I take Kerrys ‘New Shoes’ and raise her my new bike (pic to follow as soon as I become technically capable)If the new bike fails to improve my ride times in and out of work, then i can only assume there is something wrong with the seat to peddle interface.

Right this evenings training with Mrs G was a brief 1.6 Mile run down into town to Nine Springs Park.  There we found a suitably steep hill and began work. Taking a turn about, we ran up the hill and whenever we felt we had run far enough, we dropped one of the dogs leads on the ground, you then turned round and made your way to the bottom of the hill; the next person would then run up and retrive the dog lead.

It’s been over 15 years since I last run up this particular hill and then I only did it only singularly, as I was always on-route somewhere else.  So after 15 years, an amputation and one cup cake too many, why did I think that  pounding up and down it 12 times in the space of half an hour would be a good thing?
Mrs G had her heart rate monitor maxed out at 184 bbm.  Using the formula,  MHR =220BPM – Age we can see that Mrs G has a maximum heart rate of 188 bpm, ergo she wasn’t working as hard as she could.

Unfortunately there are several methods of calculating MAX heart rate which are as follows.

Londeree and Moeschberger •MHR = 206.3 – (0.711 × Age)
Miller et al •MHR = 217 – (0.85 x Age)
USA researchers, reported in the Med Sci Sports Exerc 2007 May •MHR = 206.9 – (0.67 x age)
John Moores University in Liverpool (UK) in 2007•Male athletes – MHR = 202 – (0.55 x age)
•Female athletes – MHR = 216 – (1.09 x age)

My present favorite is Miller, Londeree and Moeschberger, this allows you to tailor your mhr to your age and method of training.

To determine your maximum heart rate you could use the following, which combines the Miller formula with the research from Londeree and Moeschberger.

•Use the Miller formula of MHR=217 – (0.85 × age) to calculate MHR
•Subtract 3 beats for elite athletes under 30
•Add 2 beats for 50 year old elite athletes
•Add 4 beats for 55+ year old elite athletes
•Use this MHR value for running training
•Subtract 3 beats for rowing training
•Subtract 5 beats for bicycle training

Anyhoo, net result was good. Short sweet workout, hard work, heart pounding like a train, all clouds sucked from the skies as lungs drew everything possible inside them in an effort to get every last molecule of O2. Will definitely be repeating this.  One day we may even manage to get to the top of the hill (currently about 15m short) but that’s a few weeks away at the least.

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