Yet more running

I can’t believe that I’ve only been training and blogging about training for two weeks, it already seems like forever. Bearing in mind that I know I can’t fit anything in on Wednesday I’ve decided it will be my rest day for next week, which makes my selection as Monday for my rest day last week seem a tad foolish.

My legs obviously agree as they decided that my initial plan to run further than yesterday was idiotic and so I cut it short. At this stage I’m not too unhappy about that as I’ve still got 19 weeks to get up to standard.

Tomorrow’s plan is an arm and ab session followed by a bike in and out of work on freshly pumped tyres.

As Sean is off to Helston today to prepare for a week’s larking about in Falmouth Harbour I doubt there will be an update from him today, although he has promised he will go the gym after work and will no doubt shower us with his pearl’s of wisdom then.

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Satuday is also a running day

As I have a couple of pieces of uni work due this week I thought it would be prudent, for once, not to follow my brother’s lead and go down the pub to watch the miserable excuse of rugby match that was apparently this year’s Calcutta Cup. Instead I stayed in, did some writing and shouted at the TV. A Lot.

Not quite sure what depressed me more about the game, the abysmal standard of England’s limited and imagination-less ambition, the pathetic behaviour of the Scottish supporters in booing England’s place kicks or that the English crowd reciprocated.

Anyway to cheer myself up*, and to take full advantage of Sean taking the weekend off, I went out for a short, not very sharp, 3 miles. Making the happy discovery that if you use your inhaler before running breathing is far easier – who knew!

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Kerry – 10th March

Unlike my Brother I can give a review of my new Saucony’s. Plus points are that they do seem to be stopping my idiotic knee kicking in, though I really need to do a good four or five miles to be certain on that front. However they are quite heavy and make my feet ache a tad, I’m sure I’ll get used to them and if I change to a lighter show I’ll be lightning fast.

So this morning was another short run, this time faster and flatter as planned. Only bugbear is that the iPhone that I’m using, imapmyfitness is pants. Last time I used it, it told me my stats every 15  minutes. Today it told me every minute, which took about 40 seconds each time for the nice lady to tell me just how slow I was running in various ways. This meant it took me almost 15 minutes to listen to The Devil Went down to Georgia by the Levellers. I eventually gave up trying to listen to music and the nice lady and ran in silence*. Then at the end of the run, the ap wouldn’t update properly, trying to put my start location in Denver.

Any recommendations for an alternative most welcome.

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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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Kerry – 7th March

Totally in smug mode, for not only did I get up and go out for a very slow three miler, with some more hills thrown in. I also managed to do a little bit more ab work.

This is not why I am smug, nor is the fact that I managed to have three of my five a day before I went for trot, thank you very much Innocent. No, the reason I am smug is because I’ve just demolished a lush egg and bacon butty and I’ve got the rest of the day to work on my sociology essay.

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Kerry – 6th March

New shoes ppl, new shoes! Well new trainers, which were desperately needed. After developing my idiotic knee, I had some non-custom made orthotics made to place in my running shoes. I was also put under a strict running rehab regime increasing the length of my runs by one minutes every 48 hours. Starting with one minute only. Admittedly I was a bit pants and got bored after getting to being allowed to run a whole 13 minutes and apart from the odd 8-mile round a tank track, I’ve not really ran much from November 2008 until this week. Part of the reason behind this was that my supports ripped my arches to shreds, so I took them out. I know this was a bad idea. Especially as I couldn’t find the original insoles, which left them a bit uncushioned and generally useless for any road work.

Anyway, long story short, I finally hauled ass to a proper running shop, had a chat with someone who knee what they were talking about (ish) and then bought the most supportive shoe I could find – the Saucony ProGrid Stabil CS, which will not you over pronate, no matter how much you might try. They’re also shiny silver and blue, so no doubt will make me run faster.

I took them out for an initial trot this evening, a brief 2.25 miler in about 25 minutes, with a lovely sprint finish. Knee feels OK and the plan tomorrow is to do some hill sprints to help prepare for the slalom stage.

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Kerry – 2nd March

There’s nothing quite like starting the day with 2lb of frozen peas strapped to your knee.

Suspecting that if I cycle in then I’ll run my tyres, I instead hauled ass out of bed at a not-too-tardy 6.30 to go for my first early morning run in about three years. I’m still a bit wary of my idiotic knee so it was a fairly gentle trot of about two miles over a very slow 25 minutes. The knee seems to be holding up so guess it’s more of the same tomorrow.

Updated: I also took the stairs, all 123 of ‘em, at Queensway – not sure if it really counts towards training but it did hurt a bit.

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Fiona’s training plan

Tuesday run with club normally about 6 miles
Friday sprint training at the track- about an hour
At least two more sessions of training- running or spinning..
New job may mean a review of this but always aim to do 3-4 sessions a week

Note to self…Must try and lose weight to make this running easier…

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