41 days

We only did a 4mk walk yesterday in anticipation of the race this morning. So yesterday's graph is pretty boring, but I'll include Wednesday's graph which is a bit more interesting. Refer back to this post. You can see the three 800m intervals and that some of the way through the last one I chickened out for a minute before continueing. I think my muscles are conditioned to expect me to stop after about 1min and 4mins of continuous running is a stretch at the moment. So we'll see how this goes.

As for this mornings race/training run, it was pretty good, but I'm pretty tired now. We did 14, turning around at the 8km mark to run back to the 7km mark and again from the 9km mark to the 8km, much to the dismay of many of the other runners and walkers, by that stage. Everyone tried to tell us that we were running the wrong way, so I replied that I'd forgotten to take coke at the last water stop :P.

You can see that my heart rate varies quite well between the top and bottom values, however I'm finding this method of control quite frustrating as well. As I warm up, or get more tired, or walk up hills I have a hard time getting my heart rate to recover. It was originally set to restart the intervals when I got to 95bpm, but after 4km this proved REALLY annoying so I stopped and set it to 98bpm which worked a bit better, but especially when walking uphill it was difficult to get it down to that. I'll have to push it up to about 103bpm I think. On the upper end I found that setting the limit to 132bpm was still too low, and I think I'll want to set it to about 140 in future.

Another option I will consider is to run for longer intervals, say 4min, and then have a heart rate determined recovery period. That means I'll always run for 4min at a time and then walk till my heart rate has recovered. I'll experiment with this next week sometime I guess.

We also tried out using the Goo sachets, which seemed to have kept me in energy and weren't TOO disgusting. I don't really enjoy the texture of these gels in your mouth, but I think they may be worth using.

Looking at the pace today just under 7:30min per km, I think this could have been a sub 70min 10km especially considering that I didn't feel like I was pushing at any time. I stopped when I was tired and probably stopped for a lot longer than I needed to, trying to make my monitor happy. I think this could have been done a lot faster. I'm not sure about sub 70mins yet, but I think it's looking that way for the 10.

What is a little concerning is my heartrate at the end of the run. I wanted to gently run the last km, I now I can run 800m continuously, so I didn't see the harm. By this stage I was no longer following the monitor as it was too difficult to get my heartrate under 100bpm, so I was starting to run again once it was at about 105. Not to mention that the last km of this race is almost contunuously downhill and when it's not downhill it's the finishing lap on a cricket pitch. So I didn't see the harm, but my heart complained, and this time I can't blame it on my running partner's watch because she was a good 2m away, so obviously there are still a few issues inside, but on the whole I'm still feeling much stronger at the moment.

My legs are more sore than usual, but I think thats due to the longer duration of running at one stretch. It should go away as I start to try and run for longer and longer intervals. Have a lekker weekend, me I'm gonna take the next 48 hours till Mondays run to chill and do as little as possible!! :)

An unexpected scouting trip including Southern Cross Drive!!

I'm currently sitting at a restaurant in Simon's Town waiting for my meeting to start at 11am. I can see the marina in the foreground, fluttering flags and mast sticking up in the breeze. The naval harbour is behind that and in the background is False Bay, a really pretty sight and there is a cool sea breeze blowing in. What a hard life. It's great to come here everytime.

So I came down to Cape Town, kindof expecting not to have any of my own time, so I didn't plan anything for last night. I also didn't expect to have my own transport, but my boss had a friend come fetch him from the hotel, so i had the use of the hire car.

I caught up with my uncle and cousins at my cousins place in Houtbay, but not before I drove up Southern Cross Drive!!! I know there are already reviews of the 2 Oceans half marathon route, but this is mine, read it, don't read it :P. I've driven all the parts of the route, even cycled most parts, except Southern Cross Drive, but I've never looked at it with running in mind. Truth be told until a few years ago i would have laughed if you said I'd be running this half marathon...any half marathon!

So here goes, Southern Cross Drive seems not to be TOO bad, it is about 3km long and it starts off pretty slowly, flattens out a few times and then comes to a crecendo in the last kilometer as it approaches Rhodes drive. So that was the first part of my scouting trip.

I then went for a fantastic braai and catchup session with my uncle Philip's family (I quite a few uncle's two of who'm I think are reading this). Always a hoot, but thats not really part of this discussion. After a pretty hairy drive down the mountain back onto houtbay's main road, I headed back onto Rhodes drive considering the route as I went.

After Southern Cross drive there is a pleasant little down hill and then a few ups and downs before the climb to the Kirstenbosch topgate, which could be rather tiring, especially as I think it's about 15km into the run! Once you are there it seems that the rest of the way in is pretty much easy going, or serious downhill, it must be a good 4 or 5 km to the turn onto the M3, where there is a little uphill and then mostly flat all the way to UCT.

So is the route tough? I think so. Is the route gonna be fun? Absolutely! Most of it is through forrested parts of Cape Town, so I think it's gonna be great! Pretty tough, but great. Now back to that training!!

44 days to go till the 2 Oceans Half Marathon!!

This mornings run was tougher than I had expected. I guess it had something to do with getting up in the morning to exercise, which I hate doing. But also that it took just over 4 mins to complete one 800m lap and I’m used to running for between 1 and 1,5 mins at a time, before taking a walk break. I guess I should work at that, but until recently I don’t feel like I’ve been able to run for longer.

What was supposed to be a 8km+ run turned into a 6km run. The warmup was 1.8km instead of 2, the actual workout bit I chickened out at 3 much to Melodie’s relief I think, and the warm down, which was just the walk back was only 1km so that makes 6km. Unfortunately I don’t have my watch here, but if I recall correctly it was 47mins, which isn’t too bad, if you consider that the last km was at 10min/km. The run there and the 3 800m took us 37min, just over 7min/km. Not to mention an 800m lap in 4:07 is just over 5min/km and is not too shabby for me.

I was thinking of running 8min walking 2min as suggested in the training program, but I think I’ll first try running 4min walking 2min for a while. It’ll give me a good idea of what kind of pace my heart can handle, and it will condition my legs better for longer running.

Something else I have noticed is that, from the more regular runs, especially the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday training my shins seem to take a lot more strain. I’ve always seemed to have a mild problem with my shins but today it was pretty sore. I guess a full days rest between runs also helps. I’ll see what happens. As of next week it’s only on Friday and Saturday that I have consecutive runs.

Like I said I don’t have the data here, as I’m in Cape Town overnight and I left my watch at home, I’ll post two sets of data next time I post… on Friday or Saturday after the “race”.

45 days and Thanks!!!

Thanks to everyone who sent me emails or left comments on the blog, your encouragement is greatly appreciated!!

Today was supposed to be 60mins of training, which would have been about 8km, but I'm flying to Cape Town tomorrow and won't be able to train in the evening, so I'll be doing tomorrow's training in the morning. I thought 8km tonight and then 8km tomorrow morning was pushing it a bit. So I rather decided to do a 5km run this evening, tomorrow morning will be interesting as it's the first time I'll be running the 800m stretches suggested by the program I've adapted.

Today's graph looks a little strange and I think it's due to interference from my running partner's new Polar watch. Mine is supposed to be a coded transmitter but it doesn't seem to work too well because there is definite interference!! So we had to make sure that we ran about 1.5m apart! Towards the end of my run I could see we were almost on time for a sub 35min 5km, but I just couldn't get the damned thing to drop below 96bpm!! When I asked that Melodie step away it dropped to 86bpm imediately!

I think we'll have to take more care about how we run or how we put the hr monitors on. But still a nice fast run. I can't wait to see about tomorrow morning though, this will almost be more challenging than running hills. The program suggests that the time you take to run 800m intervals here is an excerpt:

"Because of their simplicity, 800s have proven popular and useful for 21km,
marathoners and ultra-marathoners world-wide. Basically, if you want to run a
marathon in 2:45, 3:29 or 4:11, (half marathoners should multiply their 10km time
by 4.66 to get a projected marathon time), you should train to the point where you
can run 10 repeats of 800 meters in the same time i.e. 2:45, 3:29 or 4:11. The only
difference is that your marathon time is hours: minutes and your 800 time is
minutes: seconds. So from the third week of February you will do 800's once a week
on Thursday's as part of your training. Start with 4 x 800 and build up to 10 x 800.
Between the 800s, take a recovery jog that lasts as long as your 800s, approx. 400m
(Additional hint: 800s are a great workout for any runner. Because they are "strong
but controlled," they are basically a form of tempo training.)" - Reference here

So my fastest 10km time was actually 1:07 in 2005 which gives me an 800m time of 5:12 and means my projected marathon time is also 5:12 and maybe my half marathon time is closer to 2:30. However on a trial run of the 800m a few weeks ago in this post, I completed an 800m in 4:17 which probably puts me closer to a 2 hour half marathon... I doubt whether the maths works for someone with a heart condition but perhaps thinking that I can do it in about 2:20 isn't a bad assumption. Unfortunately I'm not going to be doing any 10km races any time soon because they would give a good indication of how I've improved. Anyway tomorrow I'll start doing the 800m reps and see what happens, we only do 4 of them initially and build them up as time goes by.

46 days

Today's run didn't look promising when I left work this afternoon. It rained most of the way home, which isn't that much fun on two wheels, but I got home safe. We drove to the school instead of walking the habitual kilometer there and back. It was still spitting when we got there and there were no other crazy people braving the weather...but we have a program to follow, so we ran the 2km down to the hill.

This week was 7 times up and down the hill and the times were pretty much the same as last week except we went another time up the hill. The 6.4km route took 53min (8:16min/km) this time as opposed to last weeks 49:45 for 6km (8:17min/km) so I'm getting better at this. Next week will be 8 hills for a 6.8km run.

It turned out to be a fantastic run with a light drizzle, I don't think you get better training weather.

47 days

Friday was a 5km run with a km to and from the school where I train so perhaps 7km was unwise before Saturdays long run. We'd measured out a 10km route around the eastern suburbs of Pretoria and I'm afraid to say that it seems to be impossible to find a flattish route. I don't suppose that is a bad thing as Southern Cross Drive is apparently a bit of a nightmare. Saturday morning's 2 hour run was less than pleasant. I think the 7km not more than 12hrs before and the meds that I'd taken in the morning made the run pretty tough.

I think now that my docs taken me off some of the meds I'll have to think of when to dose myself. I intend to take meds on Friday nights instead of Saturday morning, so that I haven't gone 24 hours without meds by the next morning, but also so that I am still slightly protected. Otherwise i'll continue taking them in the morning and training in the evening, this way they have worn off enough to allow me a good session.

Here is Friday's data I haven't quite worked out where the correct recovery level is and it's a bit frustrating on the uphills because my I struggle to get my heartrate down enough to start the interval again. So I'll be playing around with that.
For Saturday's run my monitor was giving trouble again so I don't have any data and simply trained according to 45sec vs 1:30 (workout/recovery) intervals. We did ran the 10km in 80min but decided we were both too tired to complete another 40min of running, so we decided to walk the last 40min, which I think was a good call.

I had a hard time this weekend deciding what to do about my faulty heartrate monitor. Mine is about 5 years old, and there are new Polar watches that do alsorts of other fancy functions, not to mention the Garmin watches that give you perfect route, speed and distance readings. However common sense prevailed :( and I settled for just getting another sensor to interface with my current watch which does the job as well as I could hope.

Anyway all counted this week was 39km! Not too shabby!

Go ahead!!!

I should be my own cardiologist :P ... everything that I thought about my current state was confirmed. My ejection fraction is up again from 42 - 46, theres no denying it now. My heart is in normal sinus rythm... explains the "normal" reaction to exercise. He thinks I'm now on too much medication because my heartrate when they took my ECG was 46bpm, so he's decreasing my dose of atenelol from 50mg bd to 50mg/d.

Basically all is good and he is happy for me to do the 2 Oceans half marathon as long as I listen to my body and just aim to finish comfortably... nothing more. Which is exactly what I planned to do :) I have entered, now I've gotta complete the next 50 days with enough training and without injury :)

50 days... todays the deciding day!

I'm going to the cardiologist today, I'm pretty sure that he'll be happy for me to continue training. Yesterday was a 30min run, which was 4km on the route I previously dubbed Hell on Tar. Well I didn't go all the way to the top yesterday because I only wanted to do 4km, but it seemed a lot less hellish. I decided to push the last little bit to the turn around point and there were no complaints from my legs. Sure it was probably ill advised but it's really nice to be able to just go faster when I wanted to. Whats more is my heartrate didn't misbehave too badly.


I set the limits up by 10bpm to 130 for my running interval and that seemed to work fine, the problem was more getting it to drop from 95bpm to 93bpm on the recovery, especially when walking uphill so I'll probably increase that a bit aswell. This is all a learning curve for me and as long as my heart remains in it's current state, I suspect I'll be playing around with these values a lot.

51 days

I think yesterday's run was arguably the most enjoyable run I've had in years. It was 6km in 45 min which is about 7:30min/km which is pretty good for me. Whats more I think I've realised why I'm feeling so strong at the moment. I think my heart has gone into sinus rythm, which I think just means it's beating like a normal heart and that I don't have arythmia. Thats just my supposition but it feels very regular and slow, and responds very well to effort. Here's another heartrate graph from yesterday....
Whats also interesting is that at the last race my heartrate didn't go above 120bpm at all, but yesterday I managed to get it to the high 130's. I think the reason is that I took my meds not an hour earlier when I ran the night race, and I usually take my meds after my night training sessions. Maybe there's a case to decrease my medication dosage aswell. Whats more, if my heart is in sinus rythm and it stays there for a year or so, I'll be able to come off the most dangerous of my medications, warfarin. I'll have to wait till tomorrow to get answers to all these questions when I visit the cardiologist.

52 Days

Yesterday was hills again, and my heartrate monitor was working. The warmup was done between 120bpm and 92bpm, this seemed to work quite well, and as soon as I started to feel my legs complaining, my heartrate got above 120 and I could walk.

We did 6 hills yesterday as you can see in the graph below. I'm pretty sure we did them faster and the overall time, including the warmup and cool down, for the 6km was 49:45 whereas last weeks 5.6km took 50:45.

I've always said that I'd listen to my body and I think I do that pretty well, so yesterday on the last hill, when I decided that I wanted to go a little bit faster there were no complaints from my body. My heartrate didn't go up significantly compared to the other hills but I was able to do the 200m uphill in 1:04 whereas all the other hills were about 1:15. It felt great to go fast, and feel power in my legs... I think this hill training once a week is doing me some good!

Whats also very good is that in the 2 or so minutes it takes to walk back to the bottom of the hill my heartrate dropped normally to about 95bmp every time!

Actually it's only 4 days!

Unless I'm really reckless and decide to go against the doctors orders, the entire result of this blog hinges on the outcome of Thursday's appointment. I'm going to see my cardiologist. I have an idea that my improvements of last year have continued, but I'm not sure. I hope what he will say is that I should do it, but just take it easy and listen to my body. But if theres been any decrease in my ejection fraction since last time then I suspect he will tell me not to do it, in which case I will have a difficult decision to make.

54 days

I tried running using my heart rate as the control for my intervals and it worked pretty successfully. There are a few things that I need to change though. First being that I set the recovery heart rate limit too low at 90bpm. It could have been 92/93bpm instead as it was a challenge to get it to go that low. My running limit could possibly be a little higher as well, but I'll leave it at 120bpm at for now while I "experiment" with this. I think there could be a difference between the response with runs in the morning where I have just taken meds and runs in the afternoon where I haven't.
If you look at the graph you'll see my heart rate jumps quite hectically, it doesn't feel any different and I should perhaps have had the presence of mind to take it manually. I think it's just atrial beats being picked up by my monitor as I exert myself harder, but this happened while walking, not running, up a slight incline. Anyway I stopped at the 2km mark, rested till it dropped to a normal rate and then continued running. It's interesting to note that the curve of the "offset cycle" still follows a recovery pattern.

This was a 4km run completed in 30:40, i did stop the counter for while I was getting my heart rate back to an acceptable rate. I would just hate this to happen in a race when it isn't really necessary for me to rest, but we'll see.

I ran 5km on Saturday morning aswell unfortunately my monitor was misbehaving again so I had to use "normal" intervals again. It took 37 mins to complete.

In the first half on February I've completed 62km of training!

57 days

Last nights Lantern Race was quite fun. With a bit of thunder keeping you awake and some lightening intermittently illuminating the path. It had been threatening to rain and a light drizzle started about half way through which was also very nice. What I didn't like was the the 5km and 10km runners and walkers started together, and there were A LOT of us! So the first 2/3km were choas, with it being impossible to get any rythm.

But as far as the running goes it was alright, I was feeling pretty tired, and maybe I'm doing too much, afterall I did 13km on Saturday, hills on Monday and now a 10km yesterday. I think it calls for less work till next week Monday.

Good news is my heart rate monitor is working happily again, so I have some more data, and it still is of the "more normal" variety. I'm very interested to hear what the cardiologist has to say tomorrow!! Some of it is attached below.
I had a thought about it last night, and that is if it behaves itself like it has been then I can try i different mode of pacing myself. At the moment I just pick a running time and a recovery time, but as you can see if you expand the graph there I have a definite recovery, so if I set myself some heartrate limits I can run until my heartrate exceeds some limit and then walk till it drops below another one. This will mean that when I'm feeling good I can run for longer without worrying about puching too hard.

59 days

Unfortunately I have no more interesting heart rate dat. Seems my monitor's battery was flat, I've had trouble with the strap before, but this time it was definitely the battery. So tomorrow I'll be back at it.

My intention had been to do 6X200m hills yesterday, but in the end, without my Polar to make sure I wasn't damaging myself, we threw in the towel at 5. Which was 1 better than last week and whats more, they were much faster. Last weeks lap times, up and down the hill were, 3:45, 3:40, 3:45 and 3:35 respectively. Yesterdays times were 3:26, 3:26, 3:23 3:41 and 3:45. Ok so the last one was slow but by that stage, I was buggered!!

So today was meant to be a short walk, but I think I'm gonna skip it, cause tomorrow is a 10km night race, should be fun.

I changed my mind

I thought that Friday's heart rate data was pretty uninteresting because it was only a walk, but after looking at it closer it is very interesting, and proves my point about how well my heart is currently responding to output demands. The route was Boys High, which takes us on a gently downhill initially, then we get to the hill I do hill training on, which is 2/300m long. Then the 5km takes you straight back down a similair hill, at the bottome of which we turn around and come back up, down the first hill and back up the gentle slope towards the end of the route.


The amazing thing to me is that that is suddenly all reflected in my HR data (2 steep hills, 2 downhills, below average hr for the gentle down slope, slightly above average hr for the gentle upslope)... which is as it should be... but still, it was only a walk!

60 days!!!

Friday was a leasurely 5km walk in 48mins as I knew I had Saturday ahead of me. Saturday, the long run, was 100min on the road. Ok so it turned out to be 107min on the road and 13km which wasn't too shabby, it was at about 8:10min/km which was in the suggested target zone and if maintained would bring me in just under the 180min mark. So I'm quite happy with that. Unfortunately my polar was giving me trouble so I have no data to show for it.

Today is more hills! Sounds like fun. I can hardly believe that it's so close! I must admit that I still haven't entered the race... and I probably should, but I'm waiting to see what the cardiologist says. I'm encouraged, but also a little concerned by my heart's sudden slow rate. For illustration I've attached some data from October, which is generally what I'm used to seeing.


You can see that what my heart currently does is more like a normal heart should behave, which is encouraging, but it's not what I'm used to and thats worrying. So I'd really like to ask a doctor whats up. Obviously my silly bit of Polar data isn't particularly accurate and the ecg and echo data that I'll get from the doctor will let me know if this means I'm better or worse. But thats in 2 weeks time, for now, I'm gonna train like I'm going.

64 days

Yesterday wasn't as successful as I'd hoped, I set my running/walking intervals quite tough as it was a short 4km run, thinking that I should be able to do well, but it was cold and rainy, and without the proper clothing I'm not a good cold weather person. I ended up feeling pretty light headed and eventually I had a headache, which is typical in cold weather for me.So I completed the first 2km lap in 14:12, which is not shabby at all. The second lap was however a different story taking 17:34 because I walked most of the way. I think I'm also used to resting every second day, and three days in a row just gets to me, but hopefully I'll get used to it.

65 days

Part of the program I mentioned yesterday includes running reps of 800m and if you are running a marathon you use the hours and minutes you are aiming for to determine your minutes and seconds to do an 800m rep. If you are running a half marathon you take your 10km time, multiply it by 4.66 to get your equivalent marathon time and then do the same thing.

If I take my latest 10k time of 78mins then I get a goal 800m time of 6min 04sec this seemed rather long, and besides I'd like to do a bit better than that. So I used the very reasonable time of 70mins for a 10k to calculate my goal 800m time and got to 5:26. Then yesterday, which was meant to be a 20min run/walk, I walked to the school which I know has an 800m circumference and let rip... well kindof. I didn't expect to be able to finish the 800m without stopping, but to my surprise I made it!! Whats more, imagine my surprise when I completed the 800m in 4:17, now I'm under no illusions that I can do a really fast half marathon, but maybe I can do it little faster than I think I can currently. Keep you posted

66 days

I decided to look at a "proper" training program to get some tips about what I should be doing...it's scary! So I've improvised it a little. What was stressed was that hills are very important, especially considering how many hills there are on the 2 Oceans route!

So yesterday was hills, it was supposed to be 20mins of hills but the hill in question was about 2 km away, so 4 X 200m worth of hills was settled on. It took about 12 minutes. I think every Monday will be hills and every Monday I'll do 2 more hills.

Below is my heartrate response from those 4 hills and you can clearly see it rising and falling as I get to the top of the hill and walk back down! You can clearly see the 4 big peaks, it takes me about 1:30 to go up the hill and a similar amount of time to come back down.


Like I've said in previous posts this is usually not the case, hy heartrate usually doesn't respond in this linear fashion, it rather jumps around. I felt pretty good on the hills although I do feel quite tired now, and I was buggered last night, I was fast asleep by 9:30!!

Today I need to do a 20min run/walk, but I'm going to include an 800m test run in that, because the program prescribes 800m runs later on and I'd like to know if I can do one in the calculated time. If you'd like to see the program I am trying to follow... if slightly modified, check out this link

67 days

I did a 10km on Saturday, what was supposed to be an easy, flat run, turned out to be an ok route with more hills than expexted. I was expecting to complete the race in over 80mins as my pace so far this year has been pretty slow. Imagine my surprise when I finish it in 1:18 (78 mins). It was a nice race and something I can definitely work on.

I mentioned in my last post that my heartrate is doing "strange" things at the moment, but actually when I look at it, it is responding pretty well at the moment to changes in intensity. Which I take as a good sign. Where as before I would get it up to about 140 and it would pretty much stay there for the duration of the run, now it seems to vary as I run and walk. If you click on the figure below you can see, both the figure and my heartrate response clearly.

So hopefully when I see the cardiologist later this month and ask him if he thinks this is a good idea...or atleast if it's do-able. He'll tell me yes :)
Talking about things I'd like to ask the cardiologist, I want to know if he thinks I can take supplements like L-Carnitine or Coenzyme Q-10. I know that perhaps the benefits of these supplements have not been fully proven, but if they aren't going to interfere with my medication, I can't see why I shouldn't take them, especially while I'm putting my body through a lot of stress.

For people reading my blog who aren't familiar with me, I have chosen a monumentally bad time to complete this run. I am nearing the end of a Masters degree in Mechatronics Engineering and should be writing up my theses starting April. Considering that I also need to be training really hard in March and April, I'm going to be under major stress at that time. We'll see what happens. I'll keep you posted.