Janathon is over…

… for me at least.

It all started well and I ran for the first three days – not far, but further than I’d run probably since Janathon. Then I had a couple of days where I couldn’t fit a run in, but I still managed to plank and do press-ups. A swim on day six and I felt like I was kicking Janathon’s butt. But then I got my butt kicked.

I caught the horrible cold / flu that seems to be going round. What was even worse was that it had already laid me low just before Xmas. That time I put it down to being generally run down at the end of the year and ready for my Xmas break. I had assumed that the break had done the trick and the first few days of Janathon were great.

But then it came back and it came back hard.

The big hit was the lack of energy and the flu-like achy feeling. Although I didn’t have the energy to swim or run, at first I tried to keep with Janathon and plank and do press-ups, but eventually they had to stop too. It was hard enough getting out of bed and going to work (and I even admitted defeat with that one day and spent the day in bed).

Fingers crossed and touching wood I think I’m over it now (I even managed to swim 1km this afternoon – although I was worn out afterwards), but Janathon is clearly over. Not only that, but I’m already well behind in my #LETJOG14 target too.

I love the idea of Janathon and so I’m going to try and do a full month of exercise in February instead. It’ll be mainly swimming and running with planking and press-ups on days where my schedule doesn’t allow for anything else.

Good luck to the rest of the Janathon participants.

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Abdominal crunches

One of the great things about Janathon is that the group mentality encourages you to try new exercises in a bid to be active every day in January. I think this qualifies as a new exercise… yesterday I spent all day doing inadvertent abdominal crunches.

Let me explain…

Unfortunately I’ve caught that horrible cold / flu thing that is going around. What is even more annoying is that I had it before Xmas too. Anyway, I swam on Monday morning and had a good day in the office. I left early to do more work from home and by the time I got home I felt awful. And then I felt even worse yesterday. If I didn’t work for myself I would have spent the day in bed (and should have done anyway). But, as I spent most of the day with a wracking cough – one that doubled me up for 30 seconds each time I coughed – I gave my abs a great work out.

Today I’m still pretty rough, but managed a 60-sec plank and 20 press ups this morning. Unfortunately I’ve lost a bit of ground on my #LETJOG14 targets though.

– Janathon day 7 – inadvertent abdominal crunches
– Janathon day 8 – 60-sec plank and 20 press ups

Washout weekend, woeful Wednesday

I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, but I work hard at my job. It’s not so much the hours as the intensity and sometimes it can just make me feel run down and unable to train and that’s what happened this weekend.

It started on Thursday which was a very intense day (don’t get me wrong it was great too – a lot of very exciting meetings about this). Thursday is also on the training plan as a gym night. The plan is to do a bit of cardio (bike and treadmill), but have a good weights session between those two to work on the back and shoulders. However, I got to the gym and could only manage 10 minutes on the bike. I just felt weak, had a killer headache and felt sick – not a good recipe for training. So I went home.

A good night’s sleep and again on Friday and I thought I’d be fine for my Saturday session – which is the same as Thursday plus a swim to finish it off.

Friday night didn’t turn out to be a good night as the little one woke up at 2am feeling ill, but I got everything ready as per usual on Saturday morning. I was just about to head off when I sat on the bed for a couple of minutes and nearly couldn’t get up – again not a good recipe for a training session. So Saturday got cancelled. The same thing happened on Monday morning as I was about to go out for my big swim. I realised I could go and try, but I’d either fail miserably or knock myself out for the whole week ahead – again with work not something I can risk. So another cancellation.

I did manage a very gentle mile on Monday evening, but that brings us to this morning.

I thought I was feeling better so I set off to replace Monday’s big swim with my threshold training routine. It was tough.

I managed the 100s in about 1:50 (between 1:47 and 1:52), but the 200s were a real struggle and in fact I left three of them out there.

Woeful… but possibly understandable and certainly better than a cancellation.

3,000m including warm up and cool down.

Sitting Around

The one thing I wanted to avoid after the big swim was spending too long feeling pleased for myself, but doing nothing. It’s too easy to relax and think “I’ve done it” and then of course nothing happens for weeks – that’s exactly what I did when I ran my second marathon, although in that case it lasted about 6 months.

To avoid all of that I entered a triathlon in a couple of weeks time. Now, however it looks as th0ugh I’ll have to miss that.

As I had always intended, I did sit around last week – I needed a bit of time off, plus I’m not sure the shoulders would have worked anyway. However, the plan was to get back into it at the weekend, especially with the cycling and running. Unfortunately though I’ve caught some kind of bug and am not well. I’m just at that stage where I’m [kind of] well enough to work, but certainly not well enough to train.

So it looks as though I’ll be sitting around for longer than I intended.