D day

I considered another title for this post but that would mean you didn't have to read any further, so I'll try to build the suspense.

I slept very badly last night, obviously I was a lot more nervous than I'd first thought! I tossed and turned, got too hot and too cold, looked at my watch regularly, received late good luck sms's and finally it was 4:30 and time to get up. I hate getting up before the sun, it seems so unnatural. After an apple for breakfast we were driving to the start, picking up Melodie on the way. Next thing, we are bunched up amongst a thousand other runners waiting for the start... 20 minutes... 10 minutes ... 5 minutes... 1 minute... 10 seconds... the start gun goes off and nothing happens! Not for a good minute and then another minute to cross the start line!

Then it was a fast walk for the first 10 minutes, which didn't quite work because I had terrible shin splints, so I ran a bit anyway, but my knee wasn't bothering me at all. Had a Gu at the first refreshment station outside Wynberg Girls and found that the little, but rather steep uphill at Carr Hill hardly bothered me at all. About 2km down the road on Constantia road my knee started bothering me mildly, but go progressively worse, I don't know how, but I managed to keep running my intervals which were 55/65 seconds run and rest respectively. My heart behaved well and I had a lot of energy, it was just really a question of controlling my gait to prevent hurting my knee. I managed to continue up Southern Cross drive at about 8min/km but running downhill proved pretty difficult and I didn't pick up any time as I normally would.

We got to the 15km mark in just under 2 hours which was exactly what happened last weekend and my knee was probably in the same shape. Thereafter I could steadily feel my legs getting more and more stiff as my altered gait took it's toll. I was convinced they were going to cramp up. Once again the little hill onto the M3 felt fine, but the little uphill coming into UCT seemed to hurt more than any other hill yet. Managed to run most of the way to the finish, but even the crowds looking on couldn't keep me from taking a few meters walk down the home stretch.

In the end my time was just over 2hours 48 minutes, considering everything I think thats fantastic and I can hardly believe that I did it... all the hard work, the bitching and moaning on my part and the early mornings where I really would have prefered to continue sleeping. They all paid off and I finished!

Now whats next?

20 days... the irony of it!!

I went for a nice run yesterday morning, because my running partner was not going to be here yesterday afternoon. It was a good run, 5km, just over 35 min, which is just over 7min/km. I set the intervals to 1min running and 1:15 recovery, which seemed to work quite well.

This morning I started a 10km race...the Right to Run in Arcadia...it was a flat course and I thought it would be a breeze, but alas, by the three km mark I could already feel my knee and by 4km it was really bothering me, I stayed on the course till 5km and then decided to get back to the finish as soon as possible. So I walked back about 2.5-3km and finished (the 7.5/8km) in 60mins, which isn't too bad I guess considering.

So if you haven't noticed the irony yet then I'll point it out to you. I train for 2 years aiming to finish the 2 Oceans half marathon, I think I am fit enough, cardiovascularly, to complete the race, but now, with 20 days to go, its my knees that are causing me trouble!! From here it's supposed to be plain sailing, money in the ank and all those cliche's. Maybe deep down, subconsciously, I don't want to do this thing?

Well I think next week I'm going to try using my old shoes again. I can't remember feeling this knee problem before I got my most recent pair of new shoes. But I will also make an appointment with a podiatrist, hopefully he/she doesn't tell me to rest it for too long.

27 days... if it's not one thing then it's another!!

To be perfectly honest I was a bit worried on Thursday night that, although the procedure had worked, I had again slipped out of sinus rythm later the same day. I could have sworn there were irregular beats as I was lying in bed going to sleep. However last night and this morning proved me wrong. I'm back to having a slow regular beat that responds perfectly to effort, so my heart rate is once again an indication of speed or steepness of the hill.

The graph is of the 10 I did this morning which was aptly named the Sunrise Monster. The start was scheduled for 6:08, sunrise and the terrain was monstrous. The hills around Pretoria are pretty scary when you don't have a motor vehicle!! On the steepest hill, which rivals the roads on the side of Signal Hill in Cape Town, one woman had passed out and soon after an ambulance came passed to help her out!

I erred on the side of caution this time, walking up most of the hills and jogging the downhills, we were going along at a nice pace, when something else that has been bothering me very mildly for the passed few weeks, but in comparison was too small to mention here really came to the fore! My left knee started complaining to me! I think it was all the downhills, because it really was very hilly terrain.

So now my heart is happy again, and I intend to keep it that way for a long time, but my knee is unhappy! Think the universe is trying to tell me something!!?

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!! :)

Some Pics

When I like pictures of me... this is a pic from the Phobians 15km race, check those sexy, melanin deficient, legs :P
When I don't like pictures of me... ok so this was 15km later, after crossing back and forth over a mountain (uh...um... ok large hill) on the Ou Voedpad run.

Ou Voedpad 10 Miler

OK so the link is in Afrikaans, sorry to those of you who can't read it. You'll have to read my interpretation. The 10 mile run started at TUT ( Tswane University of Technology) heading west and within three miles we were led onto an old footpath, heading north over the Magaliesberg. I stupidly sprinted down most of the north face of the mountain, and I think it's a miracle that I didn't twist my ankle, but I really do enjoy running down mountains :)

Then we headed west over the entrance to the Daspoort tunnel and then a little further on we headed straight up the mountain to head back south and finally east back to TUT. I think my description is useless...

It was a pretty tough but I never felt REALLY tired at any point. I guess a lot had to do with the necessity to walk single file up much of the track. The scenery was magnificent, being able to see the whole of Pretoria, North and South of the Magaliesberg.

So far this is the furthest I've run and even though it was at quite a slow pace, I think that had it been on a flatter surface, and not hampered by other walkers I'd have been able to do it in atleast 20mins less. Which is encouraging for a 21km.

Spar Ladies Race 2008

I've done blonde(maybe I'll dig the photo's out sometime), and redhead, this year a black afro ddin't seem like a bad idea! Unfotunately my faithful sidekick Davina wasn't there this year :(

However the socks against my chest got really itchy...not to mention moist and manky!

Here are some pics of the other palooka's that decided to run the race :PBelieve it or not thats a pic of my sexy behind!! :P
And this is a pic of me, with a sagging chest, and my running partner, Melodie, she is patient enough to run when I can run, and walk when I need to walk. I say... whats wrong with her :P
And here is a pic of me looking rather tired, but happy to be out of my gimp suit..
The race itself was hot and there was a lot more walking done than I normally do. Add to the heat a pair of sox on my chest and a wig, and it makes for a VERY hot mark...excuse the pun...it was never going to be fast so the 81 minutes was quite alright for me :) Not sure about the turquoise T-Shirt though.

30km 702 Walk the Talk

OH MY WORD!! So I thought, ah, it'll be fine, I ran 15km last weekend, what can a measly 30km walk do to me?! WRONG!! It was tough, the last 10km, as predicted by one of the guys at the club, was really hard.

I had organised park and ride tickets, which I had hoped would get us close to the start/finish. They, unfortunately weren't included in the race pack, and because I got someone else to fetch the packs, on Saturday, there was no time to query it. So we drove to the venue and parked where the parking attendant said was as close as we could get, which was like 3kms walk from the start!

In an attempt to keep down the weight of the backpack I was carrying (for snacks :P ) I left my beanie behind, which made me quite miserable for the first 3/4km while I warmed up. It's unbelievable how hilly Johannesburg is. One thinks that Cape Town has all the mountains, but theres the Flats inbetween! It seemed like we were always on an incline, either up or down.

All was good for most of the way and when the 15km walkers peeled off there was a very mild desire to go with them, but everything was still working fine, so we continued. I remember going passed the 21 in 3,5hrs, which had us pegged on 10min/km. It's not bad, but it does mean that there is no way I could walk a half marathon. Some running will definitely be needed.

After that I was desperately counting the kms down, my feet were burning and the tops of my quads were aching. The only thing that gave some relief was actually to run a little! Which we did down some of the downhills and sometimes on the few flats that there were.

Then once you have finally got to the finish line... in just under 5hrs...you have to walk back to the car!!! Through a throng of 40/50 thousand people!! I collapsed for a few minutes on the grass after the finish for a few minutes, but decided if the body cools down it will me much more difficult to get back to the car. It was a LONG way.

Anyway all said and done, I enjoyed it mostly. Lessons learned - more than 20km worth of walking is nuts! - from last week and this week, many more 15km+ runs must be completed before I attempt a 21, even if my heart can cope with it, my body (muscles and joints) still needs to get used to the longer distances.

I got home had a wonderful shower, climbed into bed for a well deserved nap. Then again went to bed at 9pm and slept through till 6, gotta love it! Only thing is the sore muscles and tendons this morning, i think this afternoon's run will end up being a 2km stretch session.

Week 29 2008 and my first 15km

The past week was a big week, although I didn't get a run in on Monday because I was in Cape Town, I did get a 6 in on Wednesday and a 4 in on Friday, but a four, only because I was planning on doing a 15 on Saturday morning.

I also managed, as promised to get a 6km run in on the previous Friday, in Cape Town with my old Run Walk For Life club. I didn't recognise anyone there and the manager had changed, but it was nice, and strange to be running around a familiar old route. It was a comfortable run although the girl I was running with took some time to get used to my "fartlek" "style".

Back to Saturday's 15km, it was the Marcel van't Slot Memorial race and took us on a 2 lap course around a quite hilly part of Pretoria. What was really nice was that the start was within a km of where I live so we cycled to the start, no looking for parking, no fighting traffic to get home.

This was the first time I tried running more than 10km so I changed the intervals to 50 seconds running and 2 minutes walking. In the beginning this was frustrating as everyone passes you rather quickly while you are on a walking interval, and often I gave in to the the temptation to run for a bit longer. Mostly I followed the intervals and pointed out to someone, who told me to run to the top of a hill, that it was all about pacing yourself. We left him behind somewhere around the 9km mark.

However, on the second lap I did push down a very long downhill section, continuing through two running intervals and the rest interval inbetween. What is really cool about this race is that I lapped the 10th km at 1hr14:33 which is my fastest time since moving to Pretoria, and it was in a 15km race, running slower intervals that I usually do! Just show's how much fitter I really am getting!

Around about the 13km mark however, the wheels started to wobble, I could feel that my legs weren't used to the longer time on the road and the faster finish, on a mostly downhill course to the end, didn't materialise. I also remember at that stage that the top of my quads, where I assume they join my hips, got quite tired. But I also remember not feeling short of breath or like I was pushing particularly hard, my muscles were just tired, perhaps I had the same problem of not taking in enough sugar on route.

In the end I completed the 15km in 1hr52:22 which I think is fantastic, it's just under 7:30min/km and I need to be under 8min/km to comfortably finish a half marathon. Slowly, it seems like this thing might be coming together.

After the race, when everything had cooled down I found that, not only where my muscles tired, but my knees hurt and so did the outside of my right foot, not quite sure what that means. I think that my body needs to get used to longer times on the road, I guess an added 40mins is quite significant. I was pretty exhausted on Saturday and spent most of the rest of the day relaxing in bed. I couldn't sleep very much though, I guess I was over tired. The knee and foot pain went away but the muscle stiffness remains, but I think I'll be fine to run a 6km again this afternoon.

This coming weekend should be interesting, I'm doing the 30km 702 Walk the Talk around Joburg. After this weekend I'm not sure it was a great idea. Especially considering that I'm likely to spend 5hrs walking!! Oh well it's too late to pull out now! Wish me luck

Good one!

So I ran the "Silver Oaks Crossing : Race for faith" 9.3km this morning. When I got out of bed I could have sworn I was insane, when I got out of the car into the crisp... no crisp sounds too nice... the biting morning air, I knew I deserved to be in an asylumn, but 7:30 came, really late for the start of a race and we ran it.

My watch beeped away merrily and kept us well paced. I'm currently runnning intervals of 40/60 seconds, thats 40 running and 60 walking. The combined pace is quite good at 7:13, about 67mins for the 9.3km. I'm quite happy with that, if the race was another 700m long I probably would have made it in about 72/73mins. Which I think is a significant improvement on 76mins.

I'm unable to write a proper log this week and haven't been able for a while as my log book went missing. I think I've figured out what happened. It fell out of my bag while I was on my motorbike. Luckily it's quite new so not much data is lost.


I recieved a "1000km with Run Walk For Life" certificate at a little prize giving on Wednesday, which considering everything I think is quite fantastic. More than 600km of it has been in the past year. The other distance was from when I was less enthusiastic in Cape Town.

I'm going through a bit of an "up" at the moment, I'm feeling strong and "fast" and I feel like I'm definitely going to get there. Running a 10km and not really being tired afterwards just lets me know that I'm doing this thing right and not hurting myself. I think I want to do atleast 2 more 10km runs and then I will give a 15km a try. We are currently running 6km three times a week and will probably push that up to 7km in the next month or two. Then I think I'll be happy that I can do a little more than double that in a race.

Sorry if I'm rambling, but I'm just putting some thoughts down. I'm a little frustrated with my watch at the moment. My Polar S610i, which I think is a fantastic training watch on the whole, lets me down in races. I set intervals so that I can move at a comfortable pace. Unfortunately it seems that it can only handle 30 interval repetitions! So after 50 minutes (30 * 100 seconds) my watch decides it is time for me to cool down. So I have to stop it completely and restart! This not only stuffs up my intervals but also messes up my full race time! I wrote to Polar to find out if there is a fix, I'll post what the result is.

What else I can tell you is that including this morning I did 25.3km this week and from now on I should be doing about 18km a week, which I find to be quite hectic. Thats my two cents worth for now, I hope to update my "Running Total" with an accurate number as soon as I have replaced my log book. I think it should be at about 700km by now though.

Ok ok!! I know I must be more consistent!

So I haven't posted for more than a month, terrible I know, but in all honesty I have been REALLY busy. I try to blog on weekends and I honestly haven't managed to get to a PC on the weekend for ages!

The good news is that I have been pretty consistent with my running. Except for a week in the Western Cape when I went to visit my sister and her new baby... oh and a week where I did the cycle ride mentioned in my previous post... IT WAS TORTURE by the way... otherwise I have been consistently exercising three times a week, recently more.

So here's what I've been up to in brief:
Cardiologist visit
I actually wrote a post which I must put up later this week. But the jist was that my echo indicated a significant improvement in Ejection Fraction. I'm always a little sceptical because I know that you can have errors in measurement, but it was good news.

Great Mpumalanga bike ride
Scenery: Fantastic!
People: Awesome!
Route: Hell
The route advertised and mentioned in my last post was SO not the route followed! Because there were so few entrants the organisers had to use smaller venues and so the route had to change. I wish they had told me because I probably would not have gone. I completed day 1, 6 and 7, for the rest I took the sag wagon at some point as the hills and the distance were just too great. My body was saying "dude, you're pushing too hard" by the last day I had a bit of a cold and I decided not to ride.

Do I regret going? No.
Would I do the same route again? No.
Would I go on another cycling holiday? Very likely yes.

Western Cape visit
Managed to get in one 15km ride and a 2,5hr hike up table mountain. It's always cool to come back and appreciate what you've left behind. But I should have done more and I felt it for a week or two when I got back.

Since then
Somewhere along the line I realised that I have less than a year left to get to my goal of a 21km, so I kindof decided I need to commit to some longer runs than just doing a 5km 3 times a week. So I've decided with my training partner that we will do atleast 1 10km run a month, and as those get easier or quicker we will start to do some slightly longer runs aswell.

I also decided that I would like to lose a bit of my belly so I'm following a mild weight training regime. So far I am down to my long time minimum weight of 74kg's I hope to get to about 70, I'll be happy with that.

So we did the first 10km yesterday and I thought I wasn't ready for it. It seemed like an easy route and as I got to the finish I realised I had lots left over. I completed it in 1hr16 which is fine for me although under 70mins would be much better, but I'm not looking for a time, my first priority is always just to finish. Time will look after itself.

I feel like perhaps the extra strength in my legs... and perhaps the rest of my body... helped me out yesterday, so I'm going to continue with the weights as long as it's helping me to do so.

I also looked online for info about "alternative" treatments for heart conditions. I've seen Carnitine and Co-Enzyme Q10 mentioned regularly so I will try a small dose of this for the next two months. Hopefully I feel more energetic and these items will help my heart get stronger aswell.

Summary
Basically if you thought I had gotten lazy you are wrong, I've been working hard, sometimes feeling like I'm getting nowhere, but whether I'm going through an optimistic or pessimistic phase (I know I do!! LOTS) I'm still keeping active and getting slowly closer to my goal. Watch this space :)

Deloitte Pretoria 10km race

I wasn't expecting much from this race as I really haven't been feeling strong lately. We decided to do it because we are attempting to do one 10km every month, this is the one for March... I missed February as I was sick and I will miss the April one as I will be away on the bike ride.

For those of you who know that my creative writing sucks scroll down tow paragraphs.

As for the race, as always I hated getting out of bed. It was so warm and comfortable... I pressed the snooze button and rolled over. My conscience pricked me and two minutes later I was out of bed, walking into walls and doors etc. This is where everything got forgotten. I took my meds, took a bight of an energy bar, drank some energade and realised I had no apples... I looked at a very miserable looking banana... when it smiled back, with a gooey grin, I threw it in the bin. I threw some rediculously short shorts on...the slightly less short shorts had been destroyed in a garage walkby... never mind. I was supposed to put my licence number on my shirt the night before but I rather went to bed. Ofcourse that meant I forgot the safety pins. I got fetched by an overly keen and chirpy lady from run walk for life two seconds later, meaning that I forgot my heart rate monitor and GPS.

Then instead of walking to the start, which was literally three hundred meters from my bed, we drove to a secure parking lot... I should have suspected something when the walk to the race start was DOWNHILL all the way, I was still asleep. We got our numbers and they had safety pins! YAY.

Ambled to the start, we were there for not more than five minutes when the gun went off and everyone surged ahead. I felt pretty good most of the way, because I had forgotten my watch I kept a count of how many paces we had run and walked. Depending on how I felt we ran for longer or shorter usually longer on the downhills and shorter on the uphills. All in all it was a good race, I didn't feel particularly tired and we finished in a not too terrible 1:19. Granted it's 2 minutes slower than the last race, but then I was quite sick three weeks ago!

Then came the comical ending, after collecting our goddie bags and taking full advantage of the run walk for life hospitality tent, we began the great trek back to the car. The temptation to rag Melinda about the UPHILL and the distance to her car was impossible to resist. When she couldn't get back to her car because the code on the gate had changed... well living this down will take a LONG time.

But it was all good fun, and whats more is that at the end of the 10km I didn't feel dead tire, I think I could have pushed on for another few km... maybe the 21 is doable afterall.

McCarthy Volkswagen 10km road race

I can't say this was my first 10km road race, I did the 2005 Gun Run 10km, but this was really cool. I made the intervals easier, for the longer distance, mostly we ran for 1min and walked for 2. I say we, because I have 2 keen training partners, in fact I probably would have waited a bit longer to do a 10km if it wasn't for their encouragement.

So how was it? Well my cellphone alarm failed to wake me at 5:50, in fact I set it wrong, so I was woken up by a call from one of the ladies, wanting to pick me up! So 2 minutes later I was dressed with a sip of milk and my Jungle oats bar in my hand. Out to the car, there we go! I didn't forget anything!!

Got to the sports ground, got my race numbers etc, stretched a bit, we were a little warm from the walk from where we had parked. Then we were off. I'd say the first 3km were the worst, there was a gentle uphill and I was cold. But the rest was quite a breeze, at one point we skipped a running interval, it was a long gentle uphill. But we made it up elsewhere.

The only problem was that I think people were getting a little annoyed, because we kept overtaking the same fast walkers, so we decided to push a little harder to get away from them on the next gentle downhill, which we did, and then it was all good.

Towards the end I didn't tell them but I was adding time to the running intervals and removing from our resting time. We made it back in 1:16:31, although it could have been a little less than that because I forgot to stop my watch as we crossed the line.

All in all it was a great run, we had fun and I didn't feel like I couldn't go on at any point in the race. Obviously as we got to the end of the running intervals I would start to feel it, but after the rest/walk I was all good again. I'm starting to feel really good again!

10 km Race on Saturday

I plan on running my first 10km, since 2005, on Saturday. The plan is to run a 6 or 7 tomorrow (Wednesday) and then a 4 on Friday. I will adjust the intervals slightly for the 10km giving myself more of a rest between running intervals. I don't expect to do much better than 1hr20, but the idea is more to get the distance done, not to get a time. Hoping it will go well and be fun.

Spar Ladies Race

I think I mentioned that I did the spar ladies race while I was in Cape Town. I wasn't feeling particularly strong, in fact it had been quite a physical weekend. My family and I moved a whole lot of stuff out of my rental property's garage, so I was pretty sore by the time Sunday came. Also, being away from home I of course didn't really eat right, and I hadn't run since Monday. Anyway I had a very chilled "race". In fact I walked most of the way.

But who said this wasn't supposed to be any fun? Being a ladies race I felt compelled to... well... check it out...

That's me and my mate Dave, before and after. He's agreed to run a half marathon with me when I get fit enough to do it... no getting out of it now Dave!! :P