JogBlog running blog

More interval training with Audiofuel Running Music

jogblog — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:18:40 +0000

I’ve drawn myself up yet another half-marathon schedule, seeing as the Folkestone half I’m supposed to be doing is in eight weeks’ time and if I increase my long run one mile per week for the next eight weeks, I should be ok, barring any injuries. I think the furthest I’ve run since moving to Kent over a year ago is 6 miles so it’s not really looking very likely but hey ho.

My new schedule is very simple, it goes like this:

Monday: Gym/XT
Tuesday: Intervals
Wednesday: Gym/XT
Thursday: Short-ish run starting at 3 miles for the first week, increasing to 5, then dropping back to 3
Friday: ~~Drink wine~~ Rest
Saturday: Long run, starting at 5 miles for the first week and increasing to 11
Sunday: Gym/XT

Hmm, just realised I have no weight sessions in there. I’ll do them on the cross-training days.

My new schedule may have to be altered depending on if I get a new job and if I do, what days I’ll be working.

Anyway, as today is Tuesday, that meant intervals, so I took Audiofuel’s Pyramid Max 180 interval training session out with me and this time, instead of going slowly during the recovery bits and going a bit less slowly during the fast bits, I walked during the recovery bits and went faster during the fast bits as I thought having a greater difference between the fast and slow bits would be better than having just a marginal difference between the fast and slow bits. If that makes any sense, perhaps someone could tell me if that’s right or not?

I took a new route today and ran up the road, nearly into a car coming round a bend, and got to the top of the pyramid, turned round and went back the way I’d came.

And even though I did walking bits, you can tell I went faster in the fast bits, as my average pace overall is still faster than I’ve been doing recently.

Stats:
Distance: 2 miles
Time: 21:29
Pace: 10:45 m/m
Calories: 205
New training schedules: 1
Weight sessions on training schedules: 0
Walking bits: Lots
Cars nearly run into: 1

Vibram Five Fingers review

jogblog — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:12:37 +0000

After Adam from Fitness Footwear offered a pair of Vibram Five Fingers as a Juneathon prize, I emailed him and said I can’t win them, I’m organising Juneathon, can I have some anyway and he kindly said yes, as long as I write a long review about them.

Well, I don’t know about long, as I haven’t tried them out properly as, after hearing things such as you have to take it slowly in them and build up the mileage and walk in them first for a few weeks before running in them and stuff, I haven’t done any proper research to find out just how I’m supposed to build up and so, after leaving them sitting in the box for a few weeks, I took them out to wear in the house for an evening.

I read somewhere that the best way to try and get them on your feet is to place your toes into the little toe compartments and then slide your heel in. It took me three goes to do this, as my little toe is so little, it didn’t want to go in.

Apparently, you’re supposed to choose a size or two smaller than your usual size but when I was sent a size smaller, they were uncomfortably tight and my big toes wouldn’t straighten in them. This could be because I have abnormally long toes though, as I was told by a man tripping on acid in a park in Brixton at a festival many years ago that I was ‘really long. Everyone else here is normal but you’ve got really long arms and legs.’ Strange man.

Eventually, all toes are safely cocooned in their little canvas casings and if you want to further adjust them, there’s an elastic cord at the heel you can tighten.

As they’re made of a rubber sole with a canvas upper, they’re quite comfy and flexible, although not as flexible as I thought they might be, but that could come with time, I suppose, as I’m sure I’ve seen a photo of someone wearing them with curled toes.

I don’t usually wear shoes around the house as I prefer a barefoot feeling to be caused by actually having bare feet, although I did start wearing slippers last year after moving from my toasty house in London to the arctic climes of Ashford.

I settle down on the sofa with a glass of wine and put my feet up in front of the TV. It’s probably not their main use and I haven’t seen it as a marketing feature, but the rubber soles did stop my feet from slipping off the chrome coffee table.

They were quite comfy, but half way through Eastenders, I take them off and spend the evening properly barefooted.

I’m not sure what this latest craze for barefoot running is all about. I blame it on ‘Born to Run ’ by Christoper McDougall that everyone seems to be either reading or has read recently (including myself). Have Asics, Brooks, New Balance, etc. been wasting their time with their hi-tech shoes with promises of better performance and fewer injuries, when all we need to do really is spend approximately £100 on something that will scare small children?

Next time, I’ll take them for a test lap around the garden.

Training with the Asics Pro Team

jogblog — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:29:20 +0000

I enter the plush surroundings of Nuffield Fitness and Wellbeing Centre in Paddington and go up to the receptionist. ‘Er, hello. I’m here for, um, it’s an Asics thing I think, I’m not sure…’ and I’m not sure what I’m doing here. I was invited to come along and get some advice from Sarah Connors, a physio, and Nicki Waterman, a celebrity trainer, who are also both members of the Asics Pro Team. I’ve been invited down as ‘the media’ and I feel like a fraud.

Luckily, after sort of explaining what I’m sort of here for, the nice lady on reception doesn’t tell me to get out but takes me over to a seating area where a fit-looking woman with a dark brown bob wearing Asics kit is sitting down. She stands up and says ‘Hello, I’m Sarah’ and shakes my hand. I tell her my name and she says ‘Are you the press?’

I say ‘Er, I’ve got a blog.’ I feel like a fake again. I hope other ‘media’ come along, so the responsibility of coverage for whatever it is I’m supposed to be covering doesn’t fall solely to me.

Sarah looks up at a sound similar to someone pulling a wheeled-suitcase down the spiral staircase. She calls out ‘Do you need a hand, Nicki?’ Nicki appears from round the corner. She’s tiny, pretty, blonde and very tanned. But she’s not pulling a wheeled-suitcase behind her – she’s on crutches. She’d fallen down a manhole whilst out running back in January. Sarah also has an injury caused by ski-ing. Who says exercise is good for you?

The PR people (Gill and Rae) turn up carrying carrier bags full of Asics goodies. I’m handed a bag and pull out an Asics top and three-quarter-length tights. Nice. I’m then handed a pair of Asics Gel 1150. Nicer. I go to the changing rooms to get changed and when I get back, I’m introduced to two proper writers – Laura from a new fitness magazine and Jo from Healthy Magazine.

We go into the gym and while Laura goes for her interval session with Nicki, Jo and I are given a talk by Sarah.

Unfortunately, listening isn’t my strong point and I don’t really take in what she says, but it was something along the lines of injuries being caused by fatigue and how you start to slouch when you get tired which is bad for the hips (I could be talking complete rubbish here) and her advice for new runners is to get the right shoes, and to vary the terrain and mileage (also good advice for not-so-new runners).

After the talk, Sarah shows us some stretching exercises for strength and says if we’re only going to do one stretching exercise, this is the one to do.

Next, we swap over and Jo and I get onto a treadmill each and Nicki asks us how far we run and how often. She starts us off on the treadmill and says we both run really flat and we should be running heel to toe. I try this and immediately stop sounding like an elephant on a tin roof.

Nicki says we’re going to be raising the incline to 8 and will be asking how far on a scale of 1-10 of exertion we feel.

We raise the incline every 30 seconds or so to 8 and then back down again. My exertion level reached at least 9.

Next, Nicki says we’re going to be going faster and to push ourselves. Not being a fan of pushing myself, I’m not looking forward to this and as she whacks it up to 12kph she says I’m finding it easy. I tell her I’m not. She says I am as I’m still talking and so I decide not to talk to her again.

I’m knackered and slow it down to a walk. ‘DON’T WALK’ Nicki shouts at me. Wow, she’s scary for someone so small and I speed it back up but then I feel a bit faint and tell her this. She asks me if I had breakfast and I say no. Nicki says I must have breakfast – it’s like a car with no fuel.

I jog slowly for a bit and feel better and want to go faster again but Nicki says not if I feel faint and looks at me with a worried look on her face. I really don’t want to give up and tell her I feel fine, honest. I speed up the treadmill and we do another incline for a minute, then drop back to zero. Nicki tells me to ramp it up to 12kph but I decide to rebel and only put it up to 11.5kph but after 30 seconds, she looks at the screen and presses the button until it’s on 13kph and I try to keep up with it without dying for the last 30 seconds. I do it without dying, then it’s over and I walk for a bit.

Nicki says I don’t push myself. Hmm, tell me something I don’t know. She asks me if I usually do 5ks and 10ks and I say yes. She asks if I can ride a bike and I say yes. She asks if I can swim and I say I haven’t since I was a kid. She says I should do tris as ‘when you get older…’ but I don’t hear the last bit as I’ve got ‘when you get older…’ running round my head. Too old to run? Try telling that to Death Valley Jack.

I get off the treadmill and Nicki shows us some stretches. She tells us to keep our back foot straight which Jo and I have both not done, as Nicki gets hold of our feet and turns them straight which makes them feel twisted. So, if you need your back foot straight, turn it ‘til it feels twisted.

After the stretching, it’s all finished and I give my thanks to Sarah, Nicki and the PR team for a brilliant day with some great advice (even if I don’t remember all of it – sorry Sarah) and I’ll definitely be incorporating intervals into my training.

Audiofuel Pyramid 180 Max Interval Training

jogblog — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:37:16 +0000

At the post-Juneathon Party in the Park, Sean from Audiofuel handed out CDs of their latest interval training tracks and after last week’s interval session with celebrity trainer Nicki Waterman (blog to come later), I promised myself that I would incorporate intervals into my ‘training’. So, when I got up this morning and spotted the CD sitting on my desk, I said to myself, ok then, intervals it is.

Unfortunately, updating tunes on my ipod these days - since Windows 7 doesn’t work with the old Shuffles - is a complete flipping faff and involves me putting tracks onto my main PC (which has Windows 7), then onto a memory stick, then loading them onto my netbook (which has XP) into iTunes, then plugging my ipod into my netbook and updating from there.

I was a bit hesitant to do intervals this morning from a coaching session, as the only one I’ve done before is the Kara Goucher Endurance Boost , which involves running fast for four minutes a few times with three minutes recovery in between. Or something like that. And I can’t even run slowly, let alone quickly, for four minutes without wanting to return to my more natural environment in front of my pc where I don’t have to do anything more energetic than use my index finger to gently press the left mouse button to switch between Outlook, Facebook and Twitter.

Still, I eventually do the necessary to get the tracks from CD to ipod and get outside and press play. There’s a 48 second introduction where Sean (who has a very nice voice and does the voiceover for the Audiofuel pyramid coaching sessions) tells us this session will keep our heart fit and improve our aerobic fitness and will also burn fat and make us look good, which I like the sound of and could probably do with, especially after yesterday’s dinner which comprised of potatoes being cooked in double cream and cheese.

To start us off slowly, there’s a warm up of five minutes at 155bpm and then we’re counting down from 5 to the first sprint at 172bpm. Yes, Sean says ‘sprint’ and I’m scared. I don’t think I’ve sprinted since school and I’m in complete agreement with Miranda who says ‘As an adult you should only run if you’re near a train station and look at your watch first’. Quite.

But, wait! Sean says we’ve only got to sprint for 30 seconds! Woo hoo! I can run for a few seconds, can’t I? Of course I can. Even if it’s only as punishment for using an exclamation mark at the end of three consecutive sentences.

I sprint for 30 seconds and don’t die. Result. Then there’s a recovery of 60 seconds and Sean says to ease off and run at your own pace or walk if I want to. WALK IF I WANT TO? I love Sean. He says I can walk. Yay for Sean. But I am hardcore and don’t walk. I do my recovery ‘run’ of 60 seconds and Sean says to take lots of breath and get ready for the next sprint. ‘Breath’? Just the one? What does that mean? I can’t hold my breath for the rest of the session, I WILL DIE!

The next sprint comes up and this time I’m doing 45 seconds at 175bpm and then once again there’s a recovery of 60 seconds and then it’s a 60 second sprint at 178bpm and I get told I’m nearly at the top of the pyramid and I think oh no, I won’t be able to sprint the last bit as I’m at the bit of the route where I have to tread on fallen down fences and climb over discarded shopping trolleys and then I’ll be on the grassy bit which is hard to run over as it’s all lumpy and bumpy and so when I get told to brace myself for the top which will be 75 seconds at 180bpm I run as fast as I can over the grassy bit which isn’t really very fast at all, more of a tiptoe over the bumpy bits really, and then I get to the slopey bit that leads up to the housing estate which I usually walk up due to it being a bit slopey but because I’m on an interval session and supposed to be pushing myself, I run up the slopey bit and then I’m told ‘that’s the top of the pyramid sorted – just down the other side now’ and then Sean says ‘take lots of breath – more than you think you need’ and I still think I need more than one breath, unless it’s my dying one and then I’ll probably only need one but I’m not dying and after the 60 second recovery Sean says I’m doing 1 minute at 178bpm and I think HANG ON A MINUTE, I ONLY HAD TO RUN SECONDS BEFORE, NOT MINUTES, THAT’S NOT FAIR and then I realise that one minute is 60 seconds. Duh.

And then there’s two intervals to go; the penultimate one being 45 seconds at 175bpm and I’m told to take shorter strides if I need to and I think if I shuffled with strides any shorter, I’d trip myself up and then I’m on the final 60 second recovery and told that the final 30 seconds will be a sprint at a cruisey 172bpm. Cruisey? What kind of word is that? That’s almost as bad as ‘take lots of breath’, and I would offer my services up as the voiceover and therefore use proper words and maybe even squeeze an ‘innit’ in it but no one would buy anything with my less-than-dulcet Essex/East London tones and then I’m told to steel myself to go in 20 seconds and then I’m running the final interval and then there’s a five minute cool down and Sean says I can walk it if I want to and so I take him up on his kind offer and then he says ‘if you got through this interval session sprinting the whole way, you’ve had a great workout. If you haven’t, you’ve got something to aim for next time’.

Um, I didn’t do any walking, so that means I ran it, doesn’t it?

I get home and feel great and upload my stats and SportTracks says I did my first mile in 8.59 and I think WOO HOO, WAY TO GO ME as I usually do 11 minute miles and so of course, being the modest unattention-seeking person I am immediately tell everyone on Facebook and Twitter about my 8.59 minute mile, being careful to omit the fact that the second and third miles weren’t maybe quite as quick (the third mile not actually being part of the interval session – the session lasts for 22 minutes [which is probably how long it’s taken you to read up to here, sorry] – and so being mostly walking back to the house).

Running fast for seconds at a time. What a brilliant idea. Everyone can run for a few seconds, can’t they?

Audiofuel’s Pyramid 180 Max Interval Training is released today, costs just five of your English pounds and you can buy it from the Audiofuel shop.

Take your spam away, I’m a vegetarian

jogblog — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:21:31 +0000

Yesterday someone spammed my blog by leaving a comment about a new service for runners and cyclists with a link to a website and so I deleted it for being spam and emailed the person who posted it and said thank you for commenting on my blog but it’s spam and I’ve deleted it for being spam and she emailed me back but I was too much of a coward to open it in case she told me to fuck off or something but this morning I got up early and was feeling invincible after my raspberry and banana soya milk smoothie and so I opened the email and she hadn’t told me to fuck off but apologised for the ‘inconvenience’ (although I hadn’t actually felt inconvenienced, just mildly annoyed that my blog had been spammed) but that it wasn’t spam and I so emailed her back explaining exactly how it was spam and that anyway, her website wasn’t even live yet and only said ‘coming soon’ and containing a link to download a pdf information sheet and maybe she should wait until she’s got a live website before she starts spamming people and then after I’d finished telling off the spammer I got changed and went out for a run in the rain and I didn’t want to start off my usual way as I get fed up and tired after .75 of a mile when I go that way so I decide to cut that bit out and go down the path through the houses and through the path that goes behind the houses and then down the path through the fields and then down the hill back home and so that’s what I did.

Stats:
Distance: 3.02 miles
Time: 33:08
Pace: 10:59 m/m
Calories: 310
Spammers: 1
Raspberry and banana soya milk smoothies: 1
Paths through houses: 1
Paths behind houses: 1
Paths through fields: 1
Downhills: 1

p.s. Don’t forget it’s the Post-Juneathon Party in the Park on Saturday (see previous blog post). All the cool people will be there. I’ll be there too.

Post-Juneathon Party in the Park

jogblog — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 11:34:30 +0000

It was suggested on Facebook that all us Juneathoners have a meet-up in London to celebrate all our hard work with some food and drink.

So, the date has been arranged for Saturday, 17 July.

Our sponsors Sean from Audiofuel and Adam from Fitness Footwear will be coming along and Adam will be handing over personally to this year’s Juneathon winner – Adele – her prize of VFFs.

We’ll be meeting around noon at the bandstand in Hyde Park, then there will be an optional run of around 5k, then meeting back up at around 1pm to have the prize-giving and a picnic (weather permitting). So, if you want to run, bring your running gear (I’m not running, so I can look after any bags) and if you want to eat and drink, bring food and wine/beer/Coca Cola/orange juice/water/whatever or if you just want to come along and hang out, that’s fine too.

Stats:
Where: Bandstand, Hyde Park
When: Saturday, 17 July 2010
What time: 12 noon
What to bring: Running gear, food, wine, beer

Juneathon winners announced!

jogblog — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:36:24 +0000

Sshh, don’t tell anyone, but I have secret insider knowledge that the Little Crutchy Man has decided upon his Juneathon winners.

You can read all about it here.

The first prize winner will get a pair of Vibram Five Fingers and the two runners up will get to choose four Audiofuel compilations.

If you’re one of the winners, please email me at cathy@jog-blog.co.uk and I’ll pass your details onto our lovely sponsors, Audiofuel and Fitness Footwear and they’ll contact you directly.

Stats:
Juneathons over: 1
Secret insider knowledges: 1
Winners: go and look
Lovely sponsors: 2

And on the last day of Juneathon, I didn’t blog

jogblog — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:14:05 +0000

Oops.

I didn’t really exercise, either.

I added a titchy (that’s the third time I’ve tried to spell titchy, if it’s not right, fuck it) little bit onto my cycle home. The same tiny (I can spell that) .37 of a mile or whatever it is bit that I did before.

Well done, everyone. See you next year.

On the 29th day of Juneathon, I did more than two sit-ups

jogblog — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:19:00 +0000

Yes, yesterday’s Juneathon effort was a disgrace but I was really hung over and knackered and couldn’t be bothered and stuff and today I’m still really knackered and can’t be bothered and stuff but I did go out on my pretty pink bicycle for 5.46 miles, so a slightly better effort than yesterday’s.

Stats (cycling):
Distance: 5.46 miles
Time: 32:27
Speed: 10.1mph
Calories: 173

On the 28th day of Juneathon, I did two sit-ups

jogblog — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:31:36 +0000

I told Twitter I was too hungover to Juneathon today but Michelle said I had to Juneathon, even if it was only two sit-ups, so two sit-ups I did.

Stats:
Sit-ups: 2
Time: 2 seconds
Calories: Probably not very many