An hour of ‘running’!

Yay!

I’ve signed up for the Coniston 14, but got injured in December and so have been a little bit concerned that I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’m keen to do it as I think it’ll be fun, beautiful and a great way to explore a lake I’ve swum twice.

So after slowly getting back into running on the treadmill in the gym I wanted to do two things today: run outside; be out there for at least an hour. I managed both!

I’m still calling it ‘running’ at the moment as, under advise from the physio, I’m interspersing running with a minute or so of walking. At the moment the aim is to do a 5:1 ratio of running and walking.

But today wasn’t about speed or distance, it was about time and getting my legs and my head used to just getting on with it for a bit. I wanted to put the Team Bear mantra of #SufferButNEVERsurrender to the test in running mode. And that’s why I set a goal of an hour (I’ve not done more than 31 minutes on the treadmill so far).

My hour of running, broken down by pace.

You can see from the graph above that the walks got a bit longer towards the end, but actually so did the runs.

Over the next few weeks I will lengthen my long run by 10 minutes per week until I’m up to 2 hours. By then I should be ready for Coniston 14. See you there!

 

Advertisement

LetJog15 Update

The goal for this year is to complete 1,600 kms (or 1,000 miles) over the course of the year – that’s all the way from Land’s End to John O’Groats and then just over 100 kms on the way back again. This equates to 133.33 kms per month.

My January numbers are:

– Swimming – (29 actual) – 87 kms amended
– Running – (24.92) – 24.92 kms
– Cycling – (61.37) – 15.34 kms

Total – (115.29) – 127.26 kms

So I’m just under the monthly target, but I’m pretty pleased with that. January is always a tough month and I was nearly there. I’m sure Feb and March might be a bit under the target as well, but once I get properly swimming in the summer I’m sure the numbers will increase.

Charity Options

Yesterday I posted about a giveaway for Primal Bars. It’s quite simple, if you promise to make a minimum £3 donation to charity then I’ll send you four of the bars (one of each flavour).

I even posted four possible charities that you could support:

Freekicks Foundation
Poppyfields
Gav Wild
The Headgear Challenge

Here are two more.

Cosmic is the charity that supports St Mary’s Children’s Intensive Care Unit in London. They basically save small lives. They’ve done a great little video about it, so even if you don’t support them financially, please do watch it:

Man v Miles is a challenge by Kieren Algar to run the Marathon des Sables, followed by the Boston marathon then the London marathon. So 208 miles across three continents in just three weeks. He’s doing it all to raise money for the Tumaini Project.

Running Again

After my recent injuries I returned to running for the first time in WEEKS tonight. I took it gently and just did 3 minutes of running and then 1 minute of walking, all done on the treadmill after a gym session. Then when I got home I iced it for a few minutes just to be extra cautious.

But, and I don’t want to tempt fate, but so far, so good and it all feels fine. A few niggles, but no injury like there was before.

The reason that I want to get back into running is that I’ve signed up to a 14 mile run around the perimeter of Coniston and I’m very keen to do it. I love the Coniston swim and so this run sounds great too – although of course it’s going to be tough. What I don’t want to do is be pig-headed about it, set off on the event and then have to pull up half-way round, or possibly even worse continue to be pig-headed, complete it and damage my leg for weeks to come.

I’ll give it a few more sessions like tonight before I commit to it, but even at tonight’s pace it looks like I could do the distance in about 2 and a half hours, so as I’m not chasing glory on this one (or any event) it could be a goer. Wish me luck.

PS – I’m a bit annoyed as I’d thought about a clever / funny title and theme for this post when I was on the treadmill, but I’ve completely forgotten it now 😦

Illness and injury

I was supposed to be running a 10k run today, but I’ve picked up an injury. I’ve knackered my leg.

Since the end of the swimming season I’ve done a couple of sprint triathlons – which included a 5k at the end of each – and I’ve also been training up for the 10k. It would seem that my cardiovascular fitness was fine to get me through that, but because I haven’t run for ages my biomechanics just weren’t there. I’m very flat-footed and so that means that my calf muscles need to work overtime to provide extra support to compensate for that. Because I just launched into 5ks and beyond it strained those muscles and ligaments too much.

At the moment, I’ve been told that I need to wear soft heels as much as possible – so no slippers around the house, instead I’m wearing my running shoes. As I’m not wearing them to run in at the moment, that’s fine.

And on a side note, fortunately Andrew was able to take my place on today’s run and acquitted himself excellently.

While I’ve been feeling sorry for myself that I can’t run for a while, I’ve been consoling myself that at least I can still swim – or I could. I’ve picked up an ear infection and I now need to stay out of the pool for a week.

I had an ear infection before and it was very possibly the most painful thing I’ve gone through. For about three days I lived in a cycle of:
– Take the strongest painkillers I could
– Snooze for a couple of hours as they took effect
– Wake up and watch West Wing to distract me as the painkillers wore off
– Repeat

Fortunately this infection isn’t anywhere near as bad. But I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself and the no swimming feels pretty painful 😦

LetJog14 Update

At the start of the year a good Twitter friend of mine (I don’t think we’ve ever actually met in real life, we should correct that Dan) suggested that the runners of Twitter challenge themselves to run from Land’s End to John O’Groats – a total of 1,460kms – or LetJog.

Last night’s run

– – –

– – –

– – –

Running…

Yesterday I went for an actual run. You know, outdoors, along roads, in the fresh air, using my legs to propel me forward and not in a lake!

It may not sound like much to most of you, but it’s my first proper run for probably about three or four months. I occasionally do a couple of kilometres on the treadmill at the end of a gym session, but I’ve not been outside for ages. It was really nice just to be able to set off and see the scenery, say hi to a few cyclists and explore different terrain.

I wanted to run for three main reasons: 1) just because; 2) to try out my new GPS watch – it works!; and 3) to see if I could and therefore whether I could enter a triathlon in a few weeks time.

My running stats

It turns out I can run (in a fashion), so I have now entered the triathlon – only a sprint triathlon and is a pool swim (so no wetsuit needed). It’s two weeks after my Windermere swim, so I’m not expecting to break any records, but it’ll give me a focus immediately following the swim and I may even like running and cycling more.

 

100 #LETJOG14 kilometres this month

It’s only the 20th of the month and I’ve already hit the 100km mark for the month. To be honest I’m pretty damn pleased with that.

For those of you not of a mathematics persuasion, that’s 5kms per day on average.

Of course for me, much of it has been swum rather than run, the breakdown is:

– Swimming – 24.4kms
– Running – 12.94kms
– Cycling – 68.09kms
– Total (according to my algorithm) – 103.16

I’m just 13.5kms away from hitting the total required for the month – and I should do most of that during my swim tomorrow morning. If I keep going at this pace I could catch up everything I missed in January and be just ahead of the target required to complete the challenge in the year. That said, there’s a danger that I might be in Barcelona for the whole of next week with work (I was just planning to be out there for two days), so that might scupper the plans a little. Even so, I’m pleased with where I’m at right now.

#Febathon week 2

Half way through the week I almost failed. I nearly ignored Febathon after a tough day in London, but, as this post proves, I sucked it up and embraced the spirit of Febathon.

Slightly ironic then that the very next day (Wednesday) I genuinely forgot and therefore did nothing! I should have planked and done some press ups in my hotel room in London that morning, but clearly not learning from the night before’s almost failure I didn’t and planned to do it that evening. It wasn’t until the following morning that I realised that I’d forgotten. But that aberration then gave me the licence to have another blank day on Thursday.

So two blank days, but here are the full weekly stats (Mon 10th – Sun 16th):

– Planked – 60 seconds
– Press ups – 30
– Swimming – 9.85kms
– Running – 2.81kms
– Cycling – 16.65kms
– #LETJOG14 total – 36.52kms

I’m now 13.6kms ahead of February’s #LETJOG14 total – although still behind in total after falling behind in January.