LOL - map my run is very accurate with their mapping!
My 20k run this weekend turned into more of a 10k run + 10k walk. I'm not sure what happened, I think my heart just wasn't into it, which lead to my brain telling my body to stop running. Once my brain starts working against me, it's usually game over. Although it was tempting to hop on one of the many buses that passed me or to just take a shortcut home, I still did the full distance anyway. The weird thing is that my time was only a little bit slower than my chilly half marathon time...I find it a little disturbing since I was running for most of the race. So either I was running a very fast 10k and just couldn't hold my pace or I only run slightly faster than I walk. My first 5k was about 5 minutes faster than usual, but I'm not sure what time I passed the 10k mark. I'm not going to panic too much about having a crappy run, there are still 6 weeks left before my half-marathon. Next weekend there will be a fresh new run for me to enjoy.
I gave gels another try this past weekend - I had GU Strawberry Banana. I didn't really understand what people meant when they said that they didn't like the feeling of all the gels sloshing around in their stomach during their runs - I thought, well, how different can it possibly be than having water on your runs? I was fine for the first gel, but after the second one, I could really feel everything moving around in there. It felt really weird - almost like my stomach was a waterbed! Also, I don't like the banana flavour very much, it reminds me too much of banana-flavoured antibiotics from my childhood. (Actually I thought that I had picked up the regular strawberry gels at the store - so it was my own fault for buying the wrong flavour.) I'm out of gels for now, so I'm going back to chews next weekend.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Everything hurts
I forgot to post my training schedule for the week:
Monday: 5k steady run - Oops, my bad - I skipped this one. Life got in the way of my run on Monday
Tuesday: Cross-training (Reverse workout) - Completed! Sandra + I had a fabulous (painful) reverse workout on Tuesday night. The first half was weight training and the second half was a high-intensity bootcamp style workout. According to our instructor, the body burns through its glucose during the weight training component and then it switches over to burning through its glycogen during the last half, which is why the cardio portion feels so hard. That sounds feasible to me, although her insane weight training workout might be causing some muscle fatigue which could also contribute to the reason why the cardio portion = pain. I know its a hard class and I have been slacking off in strength training, so I dropped down my weights to 5lb dumbbells and 9lb bodybar.
Wednesday: 6 Hill repeats - Sort of completed. We were in the middle of a 10 cm snowfall and the roads and sidewalks were a mess. So I moved my workout inside - I did a 5km bike ride to warm up in the building's gym followed by 6 repeats of 5 flights of stairs. In total, I did 30 flights of stairs -- Hmmm, maybe I should keep it up and try to do the CN tower climb in April. Stair repeats are a good workout. But, they are shorter and steeper than hills - hopefully next week, I can do actual hills so I can get in some running on the longer distance/gradual gradient. At the end of Wednesday, my body was killing me. All of my muscles were sore and tight.
Thursday: Cross-training (Cardio/Weight intervals, Yoga) - On Thursday, I was in pain - my muscles were so fatigued and sore and everytime I moved it hurt. I was very tempted to skip my workout, however I had a really yummy pre-workout snack that I was looking forward to eating all day, so I just ate my snack and then hit the gym. Cardio/strength training - I stuck to mostly low impact cardio in the beginning since my muscles were burning in pain. After warming up, they felt a bit better but I still stuck to the lower intensity workout. Strength training was done with resistance tubing - I used the mid-resistance tube. Yoga was great. All of my sore muscles got a good stretching. I'm definitely going to have to keep it up, as I felt fabulous afterwards. And I have my own yoga mat now! It's pink and pretty :)
Friday: Rest - I thought I'd still be really sore, but I was feeling back to normal. I still gave myself the day off though.
Saturday/Sunday: 19-20k slow and easy run. It'll probably be on Sunday, since John and I are heading out in a half hour. My pace has improved a bit, but not by that much.
Note: I think all of the muscle soreness is due to the fact that I haven't been doing any strength training since December. I'm going to keep up the schedule for the next few weeks, but if I'm feeling like I'm on the verge of over-training, I'm going to scale back on the workouts.
Monday: 5k steady run - Oops, my bad - I skipped this one. Life got in the way of my run on Monday
Tuesday: Cross-training (Reverse workout) - Completed! Sandra + I had a fabulous (painful) reverse workout on Tuesday night. The first half was weight training and the second half was a high-intensity bootcamp style workout. According to our instructor, the body burns through its glucose during the weight training component and then it switches over to burning through its glycogen during the last half, which is why the cardio portion feels so hard. That sounds feasible to me, although her insane weight training workout might be causing some muscle fatigue which could also contribute to the reason why the cardio portion = pain. I know its a hard class and I have been slacking off in strength training, so I dropped down my weights to 5lb dumbbells and 9lb bodybar.
Wednesday: 6 Hill repeats - Sort of completed. We were in the middle of a 10 cm snowfall and the roads and sidewalks were a mess. So I moved my workout inside - I did a 5km bike ride to warm up in the building's gym followed by 6 repeats of 5 flights of stairs. In total, I did 30 flights of stairs -- Hmmm, maybe I should keep it up and try to do the CN tower climb in April. Stair repeats are a good workout. But, they are shorter and steeper than hills - hopefully next week, I can do actual hills so I can get in some running on the longer distance/gradual gradient. At the end of Wednesday, my body was killing me. All of my muscles were sore and tight.
Thursday: Cross-training (Cardio/Weight intervals, Yoga) - On Thursday, I was in pain - my muscles were so fatigued and sore and everytime I moved it hurt. I was very tempted to skip my workout, however I had a really yummy pre-workout snack that I was looking forward to eating all day, so I just ate my snack and then hit the gym. Cardio/strength training - I stuck to mostly low impact cardio in the beginning since my muscles were burning in pain. After warming up, they felt a bit better but I still stuck to the lower intensity workout. Strength training was done with resistance tubing - I used the mid-resistance tube. Yoga was great. All of my sore muscles got a good stretching. I'm definitely going to have to keep it up, as I felt fabulous afterwards. And I have my own yoga mat now! It's pink and pretty :)
Friday: Rest - I thought I'd still be really sore, but I was feeling back to normal. I still gave myself the day off though.
Saturday/Sunday: 19-20k slow and easy run. It'll probably be on Sunday, since John and I are heading out in a half hour. My pace has improved a bit, but not by that much.
Note: I think all of the muscle soreness is due to the fact that I haven't been doing any strength training since December. I'm going to keep up the schedule for the next few weeks, but if I'm feeling like I'm on the verge of over-training, I'm going to scale back on the workouts.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
19.02 km
I've been off track with blogging but more or less on track with my running schedule for the week.
Running:
I was a little worried about my long distance run on the weekend, since I was out pretty late on Saturday night watching John's band be awesome at their show. I was trying to be good and avoiding the alcohol, but somehow ended up having 2 beers + 1 vodka/water - it doesn't seem like very much, but I pretty much have zero alcohol tolerance these days. I stopped drinking when I was training for my first half marathon around this time last year and since then I have not been really been able to have more than a drink or two. Anyway, back to the running...
By the time I pulled myself together on Sunday morning, I wasn't out the door for my run untill 10:30AM! 10:30 is SO late - I usually am almost finished my run by 10:30. I hate going out for later runs, because I really hate having to deal with the braindead general population. Dodging cars, bikes and people really throws me out of my running groove - its amazing how most people have little to no awareness of their surroundings. I just love having to jump out of the way of cars/bikes when *I* am the one on the sidewalk. I'm usually a good girl, I stay on the sidewalks, rarely jaywalk and always look both ways before crossing the street, yet pretty much everytime I'm out for a run I'm almost run over by some douchebag in a vehicle. Argh, and the pedestrians - they don't look where they are going, can't seem to walk in a straight line - drifting back and forth across the sidewalk. By the way, if you see somebody else coming towards you, turning your body slightly to the side to try to "share" the width of the sidewalk does not do anything. You are still taking up just as much space. I'm getting off track again...
Despite leaving a little later than usual and having a bit of a headache in the morning, I had an amazing run on Sunday morning. The weather was beautiful and it was the first time all year I've been able to run without a jacket on. My mind was clear and my body was just moving smoothly without feeling any exertion at all. I just had this really great groove going on and it reminded me why I enjoy running so much in the first place. The Clif shot bloks were so yummy. I ate half of the package around 0:45 and had the last half around 1:20. My stomach tolerated them well and I felt fairly energetic throughout the run. I ended up doing 19.02 km in about 2 hrs on Sunday, my legs were a little sore but I was feeling great at the end of the run. Yeay, I'm feeling like I'm back on track! All I have to do is squeeze in an extra 2 km into the same amount of time...
Running:
I was a little worried about my long distance run on the weekend, since I was out pretty late on Saturday night watching John's band be awesome at their show. I was trying to be good and avoiding the alcohol, but somehow ended up having 2 beers + 1 vodka/water - it doesn't seem like very much, but I pretty much have zero alcohol tolerance these days. I stopped drinking when I was training for my first half marathon around this time last year and since then I have not been really been able to have more than a drink or two. Anyway, back to the running...
By the time I pulled myself together on Sunday morning, I wasn't out the door for my run untill 10:30AM! 10:30 is SO late - I usually am almost finished my run by 10:30. I hate going out for later runs, because I really hate having to deal with the braindead general population. Dodging cars, bikes and people really throws me out of my running groove - its amazing how most people have little to no awareness of their surroundings. I just love having to jump out of the way of cars/bikes when *I* am the one on the sidewalk. I'm usually a good girl, I stay on the sidewalks, rarely jaywalk and always look both ways before crossing the street, yet pretty much everytime I'm out for a run I'm almost run over by some douchebag in a vehicle. Argh, and the pedestrians - they don't look where they are going, can't seem to walk in a straight line - drifting back and forth across the sidewalk. By the way, if you see somebody else coming towards you, turning your body slightly to the side to try to "share" the width of the sidewalk does not do anything. You are still taking up just as much space. I'm getting off track again...
Despite leaving a little later than usual and having a bit of a headache in the morning, I had an amazing run on Sunday morning. The weather was beautiful and it was the first time all year I've been able to run without a jacket on. My mind was clear and my body was just moving smoothly without feeling any exertion at all. I just had this really great groove going on and it reminded me why I enjoy running so much in the first place. The Clif shot bloks were so yummy. I ate half of the package around 0:45 and had the last half around 1:20. My stomach tolerated them well and I felt fairly energetic throughout the run. I ended up doing 19.02 km in about 2 hrs on Sunday, my legs were a little sore but I was feeling great at the end of the run. Yeay, I'm feeling like I'm back on track! All I have to do is squeeze in an extra 2 km into the same amount of time...
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Yoga is hard
A couple of training updates from the last few days:
Cross-training:
Cross-training is coming along - I did a cardio/weight training interval class followed by a yoga class at the gym. There was actually another lady wearing ballet flats in the cardio/weight class - I wonder if this is becoming a new "thing"? Maybe I've just been spending too much time at the Running Room and I've become out of touch with the latest gym trends and fashions.
The yoga class was my first one in almost 5 years. I've been meaning to give it another try since yoga is supposed to be good for runners. Yoga is HARD. I'm used to high-impact, high-intensity cardio workouts and I found the slow, gentle and controlled movements to be quite difficult. It was still a great workout and I will do it again. I kinda want to get my own yoga mat, since rolling around on the communal mats grosses me out a bit.
Running:
On schedule for this weekend is an 18k run. I'm going to do it tomorrow since I'm still feeling sore from all of the warrior poses at yoga. I have an issue with hitting the wall at 16k, so I've been told that taking gels/chews on my long runs might help. I'll be experimenting with different gels/chews over the next few months to see what works for me and what doesn't. I took my first eload gel on my long run last week, it was green apple flavoured, the taste was inoffensive and my stomach tolerated it pretty well. I feel like it helped, since I didn't get that tired/hopeless feeling I usually start to get at 15k. My only problem was that I just couldn't get the technique down. I tore off the top and then squeezed...and got nothing. I squeezed a bit harder...and still nothing! I had to squish it slowly up, the way you try to get the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube. Everyone else in my running group just tears off the top and slurps it down in less than a minute. Anyway, it seems like this is going to have to take a bit of practice. This week I'm taking a break from the gels and I'll try a chew - cliff shot bloks (strawberry).
Cross-training:
Cross-training is coming along - I did a cardio/weight training interval class followed by a yoga class at the gym. There was actually another lady wearing ballet flats in the cardio/weight class - I wonder if this is becoming a new "thing"? Maybe I've just been spending too much time at the Running Room and I've become out of touch with the latest gym trends and fashions.
The yoga class was my first one in almost 5 years. I've been meaning to give it another try since yoga is supposed to be good for runners. Yoga is HARD. I'm used to high-impact, high-intensity cardio workouts and I found the slow, gentle and controlled movements to be quite difficult. It was still a great workout and I will do it again. I kinda want to get my own yoga mat, since rolling around on the communal mats grosses me out a bit.
Running:
On schedule for this weekend is an 18k run. I'm going to do it tomorrow since I'm still feeling sore from all of the warrior poses at yoga. I have an issue with hitting the wall at 16k, so I've been told that taking gels/chews on my long runs might help. I'll be experimenting with different gels/chews over the next few months to see what works for me and what doesn't. I took my first eload gel on my long run last week, it was green apple flavoured, the taste was inoffensive and my stomach tolerated it pretty well. I feel like it helped, since I didn't get that tired/hopeless feeling I usually start to get at 15k. My only problem was that I just couldn't get the technique down. I tore off the top and then squeezed...and got nothing. I squeezed a bit harder...and still nothing! I had to squish it slowly up, the way you try to get the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube. Everyone else in my running group just tears off the top and slurps it down in less than a minute. Anyway, it seems like this is going to have to take a bit of practice. This week I'm taking a break from the gels and I'll try a chew - cliff shot bloks (strawberry).
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Riding a bike and being mean
I'm still feeling a little icky, so instead of going out for a run, not being able to finish my run and getting stranded a number of km's away from home, I decided to work out at the gym. I ended up doing a little 6.5 mile ride on the hill interval setting - that counts right? Since working out inside is BORING and I was too far away to read the closed captioning on the TVs, I couldn't help but check out what my fellow gym-goers were doing. There was one girl working out wearing black socks and white leather ballet flats with flowers - OK, her shoes were totally cute, but they were not good workout shoes! First of all, there is NO support in those shoes and most importantly, do you really want to wreck a cute pair of flats with stanky gym feet? Another girl was working out and wearing socks with old navy plastic flip-flops. *sigh* a fashion faux pas and another case of bad workout footwear. Also, when you are running on a treadmill, you don't need to slam your foot down as hard as you possibly can. Dude - I get it, you're working out hard, but its really annoying to listen to and its not good for your poor little feet.
In other news, I went to the grocery store and we are loaded up with fresh fruit, veggies and whole-grain carbs. Ahhh, fibrous delights!
In other news, I went to the grocery store and we are loaded up with fresh fruit, veggies and whole-grain carbs. Ahhh, fibrous delights!
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
May the Halls be with you
LOL, I didn't notice this yesterday, but even my throat lozenges are telling me to get off the couch and stop watching TV. But I looooove TV.... :(
Minor setbacks
It's only been two days into my full training schedule and it's already been majorly derailed due to sickness. I thought I just had a little cold, but yesterday it got worse - so I've been lying around on the couch for the past two days, coughing and sniffling into John's blankets and pillows and living off of homemade veggie soup, throat lozenges and Buckley's cold meds. On the bright side, I'm now caught up on my soaps [who knew it was so easy to become your own evil twin?] and after a 6 hour afternoon nap today, I'm feeling back to normal and OMG!! I FEEL SO AWAKE!!! I'M NEVER GOING TO SLEEP AGAIN!!!!!!! I'm also starving since I haven't eaten much for the past few days - tonight we shall dine on baked teriyaki chicken, garlicky brocolli and brown rice.
There will be no running for me tonight, I'll take it easy and watch trashy reality TV on MTV instead. I promise, tomorrow I'll be back on track with the training schedule.
There will be no running for me tonight, I'll take it easy and watch trashy reality TV on MTV instead. I promise, tomorrow I'll be back on track with the training schedule.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Testing 1-2-3...
My first post! I've always wanted my very own blog, even though I tend to prefer to lurk in the shadows of other people's postings :)
I love to run and I've decided that this year will be the year of the half marathon. I've already run my first half marathon with slightly disappointing results, so to prepare for my next race, I'm going to try to keep up with my running and cross-training and to try and eat a little healthier. I'll mostly be using this blog to keep track of my progress (or lack of) in training for my next half marathon. On schedule for this week:
Sunday - Rest
Monday - 5k steady run
Tuesday - Cross-training (Weights)
Wednesday - Hill repeats (5)
Thursday - Cross-training (Yoga)
Friday - Rest
Saturday - 18k slow and easy
I love to run and I've decided that this year will be the year of the half marathon. I've already run my first half marathon with slightly disappointing results, so to prepare for my next race, I'm going to try to keep up with my running and cross-training and to try and eat a little healthier. I'll mostly be using this blog to keep track of my progress (or lack of) in training for my next half marathon. On schedule for this week:
Sunday - Rest
Monday - 5k steady run
Tuesday - Cross-training (Weights)
Wednesday - Hill repeats (5)
Thursday - Cross-training (Yoga)
Friday - Rest
Saturday - 18k slow and easy
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