A slow 7 miles and I got to that zen place where you're first concentrating on breathing in over four steps then out over four more then your mind begins to wander and before you know it you've forgotten you're running.
I also managed to run the whole way up a half-mile long hill without stopping to walk for the first time today.
This weekend I left my city and headed down with my boyfriend and another friend to London for a meetup of uni friends. We had a great time, but the most exercise I've done since Thursday was a quick ultimate frisbee session on Saturday. I need to get back on track.
Workouts this week will be:
Monday: 60 minutes swimming and Yogalates
Tuesday: Running Club
Wednesday: 6 mile long slow run/or 10x1 minute intervals if we do no speedwork on Tuesday
Thursday: Running Club
Friday: Davina Body Buff
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Rest
Love this song. So uplifting and joyous. It's a song that makes you lift your head and chest, stand up straight and push yourself harder, if only because you're going to leave stress behind you.
Today was another club run. I was told it would be 10 x 1 minute fartlek sessions. I've never done fartlek before so I was looking forward to trying something different. It started with a 10 minute jog, then fartlek along a trail, and then when we were done ended with a 10 minute jog up a huge hill. In the end we did just over 6 miles, longer than the easy run on Tuesday. I was too out of puff to chat mych but it was great fun. However I struggled to keep up and didn't pace my speed intervals well. Sometimes I didn't push myself; sometimes I pushed myself too hard. I've never done speed intervals off the treadmill before so it's definitely a skill I need to work on.
I was also held back due to suffering from stomach cramps. Yup, the stomach ache when running fast is back again. :( One of the club runners who's a physio said this was due to not having a strong core. In laymen's terms this is due to the stomach muscles over-compensating for the extra movement in your legs and arms when you run fast and contracting aggressively in order to keep your internal organs stable and to provide a tighter base from which the rest of your body moves - I think!
I've been doing 2 sets of 12 pushups a week over the past few weeks which might have aggravated my core muscles. I've stopped doing that in favour of yogalates so I hope the yogalates is gentler on my core muscles. If I don't notice an improvement I'll try dropping the number of sessions to one a week. The physio also said I don't need to go crazy about this and that doing a plank stretch during an ad break while watching TV a few times a week would also help. So if I continue to suffer I'll drop the yogalates and do that until I increase my core strength.
After the club I came home and defrosted a quorn spag bol sauce to eat with macaroni. When my food baby's gone down I'll be doing a yogalates session to stretch out.
Yesterday I popped down to my local running club for the first time. I wanted to join because I tend not to push myself in training, I wanted to meet more runners, and I wanted to be able to improve my technique and speed/distance without risking injury. I was nervous that everyone would be very serious and very fit and would laugh at me for being slow. However they were lovely, very friendly and immediately made me feel welcome. They were all keen in an enthusiastic way.
My 10k training schedule specified a gentle 4.5 mile run and I found a group that was doing a long slow run due to most of them recovering from a 10K on Sunday. One of the runners was an 86 year-old man who ran it in 56 minutes. I hope I can run it that quick when I'm 86!
I ended up doing 5.08 miles in 49:46, and was troubled with a bit of an aching stomach for most of it. I've been trying to do press-ups again, so I wonder if it's the same problem coming back. Either way, I'll definitely be going back for the next session of intervals on Thursday.
I bought a few exercise DVDs recently. This included Yogalates 6 for Weight Loss which, despite the horrible name, is a relaxing hours mix of yoga and pilates for core strengthening and toning. I'm a beginner when it comes yoga and pilates but I found it easy to follow aside from a few harder poses and stretches which require more balance than I currently have! I don't think the DVD contains much for someone who has done yoga or pilates before, as they might feel they're not being stretched (ahem) by the routine, however.
The instructor made some dubious-sounding claims which annoy me. She made out that doing the routine several times a week would result in weight loss. Only if you include it with eating more healthily, and a shedload of cardio exercise in my experience. She also made the random claim that twisting your torso from one side to the other can aid digestion and hanging foward from the waist means all the blood will rush to your face and act like a mini-facelift. Um, really? Are you sure?
Quibbles aside it was cheap, it's easy and convenient and I'm going to be keeping it up. I did the hour-long routine as a warmup stretching session before doing a 4 mile run this evening. A slow 4 miles in just over 40 minutes run. I definitely need to be in a running club to stop me slacking off!
I was going to do WIAW today, but forgot to photograph dinner. Maybe next week.
I guess the theme of this post is persistence. I will never be an elite runner; I will never be the best runner I could have been since I started too late and wasn't active in my teens and early twenties. But I will still enjoy it. I will dedicate myself to improving - to running faster and further - and when I reach an age where I cannot physically improve and I begin to slow down, I will persist at running for the mental and physical benefits it brings, and because I enjoy it.
I wasn't going to post because all I've been doing is running and working. Boring work and boring runs. But Mr Scientist asked me when my next post was going to be since I haven't posted in 4 days and I can't disappoint him of all people.
Last night I was up late attending to a colleague's leaving do. Late as in 2:20 bedtime late. No alcohol though, which was a good thing. I didn't realise how much it would affect my run until I started. My legs felt like lead and every second on the treadmill felt like an hour. Soon I was getting antsy and bored. I felt no elation or enjoyment, just a trudging kind of annoyance at being stuck there. I was supposed to do a 40 minute tempo run, but I opted for a less intense and slower tempo run instead. On level 0.
I chose Glosoli by Sigur Ros on my iPod at around minute 36 to carry me through to the end and I was just getting into it when I accidentally hit the emergency stop button.
Feck.
I hate it when I do that.
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I mentioned in a comment on Every Day's a Picnic that I used to have a blog about living abroad. I lived in Syria for 10 months and blogged the hardcopy diary I kept as a way of updating my friends and family about what I was doing there. In 2007 I deleted it in a fit of madness and only have one post saved - a post about the afternoon my friend and I visited the semi-abandoned Jewish Quarter of Damascus.
I've been thinking recently about rewriting it so it contains pictures and history of the area where I lived rather than just my friends' and my exploits and reblogging it.
Would you be interested in reading one post a month about it?
Are you a big manly man running on the treadmill in your gym?
Are you getting totally sweaty?
Are you running with your eyes closed and your iPod on?
Are you listening to some totally awesome tunes that you love?
Are you totally getting into them?
If you answered yes to all of these questions then by all means occasionally burst into high-pitched wailing like a dog singing along to the Eastenders theme tune.
YOU GO GYM SINGER. LET NO MAN, WOMAN, OR CHILD HOLD YOU BACK.
I wish I knew what he was listening to, it was obviously very good. Unfortunately due to his poor singing I could not make head nor tail of it, unless it was, "ARRARAROOO!" by HEYOAWAY.
I was listening to the latest Mark Kermode film review podcast (which was being done by Boyd and Floyd because Kermode and Mayo are on their hols) so there was no singing from me. I did five miles very slowly.
I couldn't find a version of the original song I wanted to feature, Je ne suis pas ta chose by Camille, that was still available on youtube. All the ones I found were pulled by the record company. Check it out anyway, it's a great song.
Mowgli's Road is also brilliant, with a bouncy rhythm that was great for my interval session today. Plus the video is simple and trippy. It reminds me of making paper figures at primary school with long trailing legs and arms made by crossing two strips of paper over each other again and again, plus its a pop song that doesn't rely on dressing the female artist like a stripper and casual misogyny.
Gym wise I went to a step class on Monday for cross training and my calves are protesting. Yesterday I ran 3.5 miles, and today I did some intervals. Blargh. I hate intervals.
Due to work commitments I'm doing most of my running at the gym and it sucks. It's boring. There's nothing to look at aside from the TV and it's always on some rubbish reality TV show or MTV. I find myself thinking about how many more minutes I've got left to go 1 minute into the run. It's not as good as running outside in terms of technique,the difficulty of propelling yourself forward versus keeping up, not to mention fighting strong winds or dodging around people going slower than you are. It's hotter than running outside with no wind to cool you down and I get really sweaty. :(
Still, it's always there. It's never raining inside the gym. It's never sunny inside the gym - although sometimes in summer the AC does sometimes fail. It's never windy inside the gym. There are no jokers telling me I should be running when I'm walking to cool down after a 4 mile run. There are no hecklers at all in fact. I'm not going to be run over by someone on a school run. I'm not going to get overexcited Jack Russels running up to me and doing circles around my feet.
Today's run was a 35 tempo run. I intended to do 10 minutes warmup, 20 minutes at 85% of HRM, and 5 minutes cooldown. But I forgot to set a custom 85%, thought Garmin Level 5 corresponded to 85% when as far as I can tell it's closer to 90%. I should have known something was up when I was running at suspiciously close to race pace, but I kept up anyway. I know better for next time. It was a good run, and despite the dull surroundings I enjoyed it and felt knackered but energised at the same time by the end of it.
Ahh... Today's gym session went better than yesterday's. I had a better (but still not great :( ) night's sleep and two days of eating healthy and balanced meals at the correct times under my belt. Following Hal Higdon's plan I had to do a 3 mile run at an easy pace. I set the treadmill to do a hill session at no more than level 3 to mimic running outdoors and used my Garmin to keep my heart rate under Zone 4. (I've just realized this is probably closer to 80% instead of Higdon's recommended 65%-75% so I need to set a custom max for my next run.) I did the same yesterday and finished the 3 miles in 30:22 with an average heart rate of 161. Today I did it in 28:35 with an average heart rate of 161 as well.
I can't believe I haven't featured one of my favourite bands, Calexico, yet. The driving drums but laid back feel to the song were perfect for my easy recovery run. I should have run it yesterday, but went to the beach instead, so I swapped the days around. I headed out of the village and into the countryside. I love running outside in the summer. No stomach ache, but then I didn't run fast at all.
I went for a run on Monday night. I turned out of the block of flats, down the main road, through the retail estate, down the single-lane track the leads down the steep sides of the lush hill with a view across miles more of valleys and woods, into town, along the streets crowded with students and runners, across the bridge and up to where the cathedral resides. There I remembered For Emily Whenever I May Find Her, which is a lovesong of heartfelt gratitude, and the line about hearing cathedral bells tripping down the alleyways.
I headed back for the river bank and the languid waters with students floating in rubber tubes and rowers and deep green trees overhead. There I stopped and began to walk, tired and melancholy. I followed the river around and under bridges until I reached the road that leads up into the hill on which the suburb I live in sits.
I reached my block of flats, worn out, my mind calm.
This is why I run, I told myself.
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Right now I should go for a run. I skipped on a gym session after realising I'd forgotten my sportsbra, a vital piece of equipment any woman would agree. I've eaten too much today having never felt full, I feel weepy and melancholy. It's dusk and I'm seized with that feeling I used to get dusk when I was a child when I just wanted to get out there and run and run following the path along the rugged coast near where I grew up until I reached Lindisfarne or Scotland or somewhere far away.
But right now it's getting dark and from my window I think can see another rain storm sweeping across the rooftops and treetops towards me.
Ok so I'm at the gym. Last night I discovered an amazing song by an amazing band, Short Change Hero by The Heavy, and I thought, "That is going on my gym playlist RIGHT NOW." I could see it being used in a western film with cowboys getting ready for a shootout at noon in a flea-infested town somewhere in the deserts of Utah. The wind whistles and raises a small dust devil that rolls along the main street. The hero chews down on his cigar and squints. The townspeople rush inside. The churchbell tolls...
So I downloaded it, loaded it onto my iPod shuffle and practically skipped to the gym today knowing that THIS AMAZING SONG would feature in my workout and I was looking forward to my planned CT session because it's not as hard as the intervals I did yesterday or the race pace run I've got tomorrow.
So I got to the gym and hopped on the elliptical. 30 minutes later it still hadn't appeared. Never mind, I had 30 minutes on the bike to do as well, it would surely crop up. 15 minutes in and still no 'Short Change Hero'. My earphones have been dodgy recently and I lost Lefty last week. 15 minutes in Righty joined him in the big earphone factory in the sky.
So here is a peaceful song for a peaceful run. On Sunday I ran a slow 40 minute recovery run. Usually for my recovery run I just run slowly for the set time, but this time I used the heart rate monitor on my Garmin to set my pace... If I'm correct, and I could be wrong because I'm still getting to grips with using a HRM for training, recovery runs should be at 50%-60% of the max heart rate and I found out for me that's slightly faster than a brisk walk/jog (omg embarassing!) and I have been running too quickly on my recovery runs to fully benefit from them. So I ran slower and it was a lot harder than I thought to keep my heart rate down. And today was a rest day so there's little more to report on the training front.
But going back to hiking in the Peak District. On the first day we walked in the Hope Valley up Losehill, along the Great Ridge to Mam Tor and back down to Castleton and it was beautiful.
The second day we did one of the most famous Peak District walks - Kinder Scout from Edale. The route we followed can be found here.
We started around lunchtime, having had a lazy breakfast of American pancakes and general faffage.
Grindsbrook, near the start of the walk. In this little valley we were met with two ways around a steep hillock at the side of Grindsbrook - along the rocky beck or over the top of the hillock - and a very kind man all in green told us they both met up after it, but the way scrambling over the rocks in Grindsbrook was more fun so we followed that.
After following Grindsbrook Clough for a while you come to the last ascent onto the Kinder Plateau, a scramble that looks formadible but which is easier than it looks with lots of well-rooted boulders to climb up. This site has much better pictures than I of tha part of the walk in much better weather too! We overtook a family who were climbing it with their children. One of the girls was just 6 years old and she was bouncing up it, how amazing is that?
After that we headed across the Kinder Plateau for Kinder Downfall. On the map it looks fairly straightforward - follow the path across a flat bit. Only we lost the path. And had to scramble around peat bogs intercut by gullies where streams flowed in order to find the path again.
On Kinder Plateau
After that we headed for Kinder Downfall - a waterfall that plunges off the edge of the Kinder Plateau and down into the valley below. Only it would if it wasn't so windy it was being blown back up onto the plateau.
Kinder Downfall.
Sheep sheltering at the top of Kinder Downfall.
The sheep around Kinder Downfall were among the friendliest I've ever met, in fact they're the only friendly sheep I've ever met - they must be used to walkers feeding them sandwiches.
We were dog tired by the time we got back to the farm, but ready to walk through the Manifold Valley to Thor's Cave on the Sunday.
Today was a fairly easy 4 mile distance run at a 6.5mph pace. Fortunately the AC in the gym was fixed and I didn't feel like I was trying to run in a wetsuit.
Today I also roughly plotted the course of the 10k I'm doing in July - the Great North 10k - on walkjogrun.net. From what I can tell there are quite a few steep hills, but they're not very high. I'll walk it when I get the chance. Where I live if you're not going down a hill you're coming up one, so I'll work as many as humanly possible into my runs to try to get myself ready.
What other things would you recommend?
I mentioned I went to the Peak District over the weekend. We found a few walks from walkingenglishman.com and followed them since none of us knew the area at all. The site's brilliant - it has a great many walks from all over the UK and is very detailed as it has full routes mapped out on OS maps as well as information about potential hazards and where you can get refreshments (beers in our case!) and so on. Some websites just list the start and end points with a few directions where to turn left etc, so it's great to be able to plot them out on your own map. I can't recommend it enough.
We started with a walk along the Great Ridge to Mam Tor in the Hope Valley. We started near Castleton, not Hope, and curtailed the walk because we were hungry and the pub was beckoning. Rather than walk across the hill from Mam Tor to descend into Castleton between Peveril Castle and Peak Cavern we turned and followed the road/path to Mam Tor Farm and down into Castleton that way.
The walk was a beautiful introduction to the Peak District.
Looking back toward Lose Hill you can see the path we followed along the ridge with Edale to the left and the Hope Valley to the right.
Here you can see the edge of Mam Tor cliff looking back over Back Tor and Lose Hill in the distance. Ignore the date, we didn't travel back in time...
A perfect walk to blow the cobwebs away and get us ready to walk Kinder Scout the next day...
Hello, I'm back. I'm not dead or abandoning the blog. I've been busy and I've been away. My partner and I spent the bank holiday weekend walking in the Peak District with friends. The calories I burnt walking just about covered the pub meals and beer, but only just. I'm going to blog our walks later this week when I've a bit more time.
Today's song is in honour of a) one of the best bands ever, and b) the gym today because the AC was broken and it felt like it was around 28C in there. I was doing some sit-ups and pushups on a mat and I swear to God my shins were sweating. Not the healthy I've-just-done-some-heart-pumping-cardio sweat, but the miserable itchy sweat that your body does when it's too hot and it wants you to find a nice fridge to sit in. Or is this TMI?
Anyway, my 3.5mile 6.9mph race pace run on the treadmill was incredibly difficult, and I felt a bit sick afterwards but I refused to give up (aside from a short pause to swig some water around 2 miles in) because I've been slack recently and missed a few training sessions. I missed an interval and a long-distance run last week on top of the runs I'd already planned to drop because I'd be walking instead.
All I know is if the AC is still broken tomorrow there's no way I'll be able to do my planned interval session. :(
I'm going to tentatively put some June goals up. I'm a bit loath to do this because I rarely achieve stated goals, but here goes anyway.
Lose 4lb
Complete every training session for my sub-hour 10K
I did intervals today. 10 x 1 minute jogging at 10 min/mile followed by 1 minute running like my life depended on it at 07:24 min/mile. By the 6 repetition it was kicking my arse, by the 10th it was handing it to me on a plate. I remembered why I hate interval training, but I've really struggled with my last few sessions so it was good to see that I could do this.
I finished The Beauty Myth last night and it was brilliant. By the end I'd grabbed a biro and was underlining bits and writing notes in the margins and I never do that.
I'm not going to go into much depth about the book because it's been reviewed by people more talented at getting to a book's essence and well-versed in feminism than I.
In the book which was originally published in 1991,Wolf asks the question why do women feel under greater and greater pressure to conform to certain physical standards while actually when it comes to political and personal rights we enjoy more freedoms than ever. She theorises that the monolith of 'them', 'the patriarchy', 'the establishment' feels threatened by the gains women made during the first wave of feminism and as such needs to create what Wolf calls an Iron Maiden. A metal sarcophagus in which victims are placed to either suffocate to death or be stabbed by the spikes inside and bleed to death.
According to Wolf the Iron Maidan which can be found imprisoning and suffocating women in all aspects of their lives: work, culture, religion, sex, hunger, and violence. It is not enough to merely be, women are told in all domains of their lives, they must also live up to a rigid and perfectionist set of standards which they are simultaneously being told they will never be capable of doing.
What Wolf doesn't really examine is how the myth affects non-white, non-middle class, non-heterosexual, non-professional and non-college educated women. Ethnic minority women and working-class women get a look in occasionally, but only as bit players that support the perspective of middle-class women. I suspect the book would be a multi-volume affair if she had. Subsequent books on similar topics, such as Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, have made greater efforts to be more inclusive.
I read this feeling more and more guilty about the makeup bag in my bedside cabinet. Was my mascara a political statement saying I have bought into the self-loathing and misogyny? Wolf points out that there's no shame in wearing makeup or dying your hair or wearing skyscraper high heels, (or, ahem, losing weight) as long as the place from which you approach them is positive and not negative. I run to be strong, not to fit some else's ideal.
Also my frown deepened and deepened as I read it, because I don't know any men that buy into the beauty myth. The men in my life - my partner, brother, father, male colleagues and friends and acquaintances - treat women with dignity and respect, or rather, as human beings. But Wolf acknowledges that patriarchical institutions and not men as individuals enforce the myth.
Wolf is astoundingly perceptive - she notes that the beauty myth hurts men as much as women, and goes on to say that men will begin to be targeted by the rigid perfectionism of the Iron Maiden. She predicts a rise in male anorexia and other eating disorders. 20 years later men are being targeted by the beauty industry in similar ways, and eating disorders in men, which were once almost non-existant, have increased.
To steal someone else's phrase, I believe in very gradual change.
And I wonder what Wolf would make of the internet if she were writing today.
Congratulations if you made it this far. But what does this have to do with Weezer? When I was in the gym Buddy Holly came up on my iPod and there I was running along to a song which felt as fresh and relevant today as when I first heard it in 1994, much like The Beauty Myth, which was published a good two decades ago, does today.
Both of them made me feel a bit old as well. Seriously? The Little Mermaid's closer to the moon landing than today? I remember getting a free Flounder and Ariel with a Happy Meal. Jesus...
I woke up with this song in my head and kept humming the same first line over and over again while at the gym today. "I'd like to be under the sea/in an octopus' garden..."
Aside from that I've got nothing much to post. Today was supposed to be a rest day, but work and life commitments on Wednesday means I'm too busy to workout or even run so I've swapped Wednesday's CT session for today's rest day. I did a relaxed 30 minutes on the elliptical at level 10 and a slow pace followed by 30 minutes on the reclining fixed bicycle-thing at a fat burning level.
I've got 9 weeks until my 10k race so I've worked out a training schedule which I'm going to try and post. It's unleashed the geeky side in me and I colour the cell green when I've done the session and note far/fast etc as well as how I felt afterward.
Anyone else do anything like that to log exercise?
I've had two easy days as I've begun to taper ahead of the 5K race on Sunday. Yesterday was a 30 minute jog then 30 minutes on the elliptical machine, and today was a slow 5 mile run. Tomorrow I'm resting.
I the above version of Sing Sing Sing is one of my most favourite songs. Many moons ago I used to play the trumpet in a jazz band to a standard which never really got above middling to fair, but this song was one of the most fun pieces to play. It's the way it starts with the drums driving out a rhythm, the trombones chug out the start, in comes the rasping trumpets then the smooth saxes all in harmony and the drums keeping pulsing on. The variation in screaming stacatto brass, smooth legato wood wind, tinkling piano, loud and quiet, intricate and simple and all the sections playing different rhythms all together make it a joyous, bouncing piece of music. You can't help but move when you listen to it.
I listened to this in the gym and may have had a bit of a boogie moving in my hands up and down a bit while running in line with the parts I used to play...
Do you ever dance a long in the gym or out of it to music?
Well I failed the fit test with a measly 6 push-ups and 15 sit-ups. At least I know what I need to work out. I've started and stopped the 100 pushups challenge twice now, but I'm going to start again and continue. I'm also going to do the 200 situps challenge so I can get fitter and hopefully pass the test in a few months or so.
I aced the run, however, running 2 miles in 15:06.
We did the fit test before work at 7.30am, and I did what I usually do when I exercise in the morning - ended up sleepy by 11am despite having refueled after the test on a healthy breakfast of porridge, fruit, and a boiled egg washed down with black coffee then overeating at lunch time. It was very hard not to stress about not losing weight this week.
Even though I was careful at dinner and ate well I managed to only go slightly over my daily calorie limit I got obsessed with going to the gym to burn off enough to bring me well under. I found myself thinking, 'If I jog for 30 minutes then go on the elliptical for 30 minutes I could easily burn 500 calories'. Even writing this out has woken up the antsy worried voice in my body that is saying I need to exercise like crazy even though my hamstrings and my sciatic nerve in my right bum muscle is aching like crazy so I've had to take ibuprofen today to dull the pain and I need let my body recuperate. Yes, I'm a wimp! I keep telling myself it'll be ok, I can eat well and work out tomorrow and I don't have to risk injuring myself.
The songs from an album I adore, by Guillemots. It's one of those rare albums where there are no filler songs and every one is a gem.
