Not quite a mission

Over the passed few months I've gotten really unfit. Gym is really boring, but necessary. It was easier when there were people to talk to. So I've decided once more to cycle to work 3 times a week, it helps that I can now shower at the work gym. I had wanted to do the 94.7 but have a clash so I can't.

I'm also going to go to gym twice a week to do weights. I'll see if I'm alive by the end of the week, but I'd also like to swim once a week, so that would have to be on Saturday morning I guess... a few laps of the pool at gym.

I started the cycling yesterday, to work it took me 32 mins, the return trip was torture as I seem to live quite high up. That took me 45 mins, but I felt pretty good afterward. Of course when I got into bed at 9:30, which is earlier than usual for me, it was lights out. On the brighter side, waking up at 5:45 isn't so hard anymore.

I want to say things like "I hope I can keep it up", but I should be saying things like "I will keep this up". I just need to find another tangible goal to work towards, but losing 8kg is good enough for now. When I ran the Two Oceans I weighed about 74kg's. Now I weigh 82!! When I get back to that weight, I'll think of riding the Argus or doing the 94.7 again. So now it's going to back to boring blogging of exercise sessions I'm afraid.

Yes I did go to gym this morning, and I feel good for it. I only did two sets of my "full body" workout, I'll take that up to three next week, when I feel stronger.

I said it would be some interesting data!

Today's run was interesting, although I didn't feel as bad as Monday or as good as a few weeks ago, I did feel a little better. I was 400mg of Amiodarone up, so I assume it is taking some effect. You can see from the graph that my heart was behaving even more unpredicatably! Hopefully by tomorrow it will have taken enough effect to either have slipped me back into sinus rythm or help the cardioversion force me into sinus rythm


It was hills again, this time run by the whole club. It was sobering knowing that a few weeks ago I was running up that hill as fast if not faster than everyone and now I couldn't keep running for the 200m hill. Anyway I ran 45 seconds of the hill and then walked the rest, resulting in the uphill taking me 2min instead of just over 1min. Amazing what the rythm of the heart does! It's a huge difference. In all we did 6km with 6 hills, which was more than I intended to do, but I'll sleep well tonight and be ready for tomorrow's procedure.

I've been thinking about what might happen after tomorrow. I think, whether I'm in sinus or not, Dr Guerra will probably suggest that I stay on the amiodarone for a few more days and perhaps try another cardioversion. Whatever happens I'm still not convinced that I should shift this goal out yet. I want to do the 2 Oceans in a month and if I'm feeling well enought to continue training I will. I think whatever happens tomorrow I'll take it a little more easy than before. I'll concentrate on getting the distance done and anything faster than 7:30 per km will be too fast. Afterall the goal was alway just to finish! I got so caught up with this new found strength that I forgot that. I have a bad heart, I should never let myself forget that, I think for the most part I have learned to live well within that, but the passed few months just allowed me to forget for a while. I won't make that mistake again.

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.

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!

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.

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!

73 days to go - feeling better

So I went for a 5km run yesterday, it was fantastic... i don't think I've enjoyed... REALLY enjoyed a run since before I left for New Zealand, late November. I'm pretty sure I know what has been bugging me, I had relaxed my outlook on diet and fluid intake, most likely resulting in me eating more salt than I should and drinking more fluid than I should. Both of these add up to me retaining too much water. I decided on the weekend that I needed to be more careful again, and I've lost 1.5kg since Saturday so I think I was right.

Yesterday's run was a 37minute 5km, which is pretty fast for me! Infact I rarely get under 37 mins for a 5km especially on a hot day :)

Too few days

So I haven't done this in a while, but considering the lack of time left I think I need to start blogging again. I had a rather busy holiday, drove 1500km down to Cape Town from Pretoria, spent 2 days (including christmas) with my family in Robertson, drove 700km to the Orange river on boxing day and then spent 5 fantastic days paddling down the river. Drove back to Cape Town, spent a few days with friends and then drove back to Pretoria. In that time I consumed more stuff that is bad for me than I think I have the entire preceding year...

Getting back to it has been pretty tough, especially considering that I was sick late November, then I travelled to New Zealand for a week early December, then 2 weeks back at it and then away on the previously mentioned holiday. I feel in bad shape :( and then there the heat and the humidity that really don't help either.

So from today on in 76 days to go, I'm going to try to be a lot stricter about what I eat and drink again, and I'll try to step up my pace a little, but mainly the distance... a lot.

I had intended running my first 10km of the year today, but decided against it last night cause if I'm honest with myself I'm not feeling well enough to run a 10.

But so far this month I've run 36 km, which is alright, but pretty shappy by last years standards... I'm gonna have to pull something out the hat if I wanna do this, but as much as the mind is willing... the body isn't really :(

Realisations

I meantioned in an earlier post that I'd realised something, that being the fact that I'm pretty limited in the output I can produce. So trying to get a little bit faster by running slightly longer is kindof in vane. Thing is, I can consistently complete a longer run in less than 8min/km, which is fine to achieve my goal. Whats more, sometimes walking for longer actually leaves my overall pace unchanged, if not improved. So I'm going to stop trying to run for longer, and make sure my "rest" intervals are long enough for me to really rest.

Granted I did run 6km yesterday in 42:30 with the intervals set to 75/90 and I think that was my fasted 6km time trial time. But still I think it's probably better for me to be at a comfortable pace, but doing more distance, than going any faster at this stage. So that's what I intend to do. Possibly, tomorrow, possibly next week I'll start doing 7km in the evenings, after having walked 1km to the club, and 1km home, that is 9km in total that evening, add to that the 2km run I do in the morning on the same day and I'll be doing 11km a day!! 33km a week, and thats if theres no race on Saturday!

On another note...in response to Romy's comment... I am quite aware that on Saturday I dressed up like a woman, however...I'm pretty sure I'm not one! :P The fact that they are all the rage for your half of the gene pool makes no difference to me! Me and a turquoise top... I'm sorry! Glad you guys are getting to the gym... watch this space for news about my lastest toy... Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Week 33 - the rest

I started the 2 runs a day this week, as mentioned in my previous post. So in total I ran 22km this week, which is not too shabby I guess, it's just that I've run faster and I'm not feeling particularly strong. The morning runs are great, and it's quite nice to just do a short run in the morning. It wakes you up for the day! I haven't been running them particularly fast. Wednesday was 7:19 and Friday 7:15, but that should improve as the running time goes up. As for next week, my running partner has suggested that we increase the running time by 5 seconds a day. I'm a bit skeptical but I'll give it a go.

Yesterday while running I was thinking that there must be an optimal resting time for me. That is clearly demonstrated by a 10km run we did a few weeks ago. I'd wanted to do an easy run, so I set the rest interval at 2mins and the running time to 45 seconds. But the result was a very satisfying 79mins for 10km. OK it's not fast, but it just demonstrated to me that if I rest enough I could complete a run faster.

So that set me thinking... wouldn't it be cool if someone interested in this kind of thing (people with chronic illnesses) could help me work out an optimal program? I spoke to my club manager about a training program, but I really don't think he understood what my problem is, and he didn't seem to be interested in taking the time to find out. So what I am seriously thinking of doing is offering myself as a study subject to the biokinetics department at the University of Pretoria. Perhaps there would be a student who would be interested in working with me, and perhaps my cardiologist, to get the most out of me? Because, if I'm honest with myself, even though I'm listening to my body, I'm also kindof clutching in the dark at this thing. It would be great to have someone really interested in researching exercise options for someone like me.


Anyone have any comments? Suggestions?

Week 33 - Atleast the first half of it

What I learned from the 15km and the 30km is that I need to get more distance under my belt, I need to do more 10km+ runs. At the same time though, I really want to get a little faster. Add to that what I learned from last years summer - I don't run well in the heat and humidity. All this adds up to one thing. I need to some morning training.

I can't follow any of the traditional training plans, for obvious reasons. I can't follow the pace goals that those programs set you, and I'm not sure if I can follow the distance goals just yet either. However any morning run adds to my distance and I've read that you can gain from splitting your training into shorter session split between the morning and evening. So basically, to get to the distance goals the traditional programs suggest I will just run more short runs in the mornings.

I also want to work on my pace and endurance, extending the time I spend running while maintaining my resting time. My goal pace is currently 6min/km. What I decided to do was to measure out a straight km. So there and back would give me 2km. On this course I can change my running/walking times until I am comfortable running at 6min/km. Once I've done that I'll increase the distance to 3km and so on.

In the evenings for now I will probably try to get my pace to about 7:30 a km and keep it there, while increasing the distance I run. I think until the end of August I'll continue to run 6's and then start running 7's in September. However when summer comes I will probably try to run more in the mornings and less in the hot afterrnoons.

So I started this disjointed training this morning, running the 2km stretch in 14:38 (7:19/km), and not feeling particularly uncomfortable about it. I will change the times every Monday, hopefully I'll get to the 6min/km mark quite quickly over this short distance. I've yet to see what I feel like this afternoon, but it is a great way to start the day!

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.

Training plans

As it seems to be going better again, I think I must think of how fast I want to be going and then keep it there if possible. The problem is that there are two aims that I have in mind, going a little faster and going a lot further. The question is how to do both?

While running yesterday I think I came up with a plan. At the moment I can comfortably complete 4, 5, 6 and at a push even 10km. Problem is that my ultimate goal, to complete the Two Oceans Half Marathon, means that I need to be able to run at a pace faster than 8.5km for the entire race. At the moment I'm quite close to that, so I think I need to speed up a bit. I would be more comfortable at a pace of about 7min/km. That should have me finishing in about 2hrs 15, with a lot of time left till the three hour cuttoff. Question is how to get there and maintian it for greater distances.

What I'm going to do is stick to my "style" of running, where I run and walk. At the moment my walking time is 1min and my running time is 30s. This allows an average pace of around 8min/km, which in itself will be fast enough to allow me to complete the race in time, but I don't want to cut it too fine. Then at a certain training distance, 5/6km at the moment I will keep the walking time the same and slowly increase my running time till I reach the 7min/km mark. Only once I can comfortably run that distance at 7min/km will I start training to go another km.

It's pretty simple, but it makes sense to me and should allow me to progress without hurting myself. I will try to keep doing a monthly 10km race aswell to keep track of my progress. Once I can run a 10km in under 70 minutes then I will start looking to run slightly longer distances. A great suggestion from one of the Run Walk For Life coaches was that in a race if you can find 2 km markers you can run from one back to the previous one, and then continue running, this immediately adds 2km to your race distance, which is a great way to start moving towards the final goal of 21.1km.

The Frustration is getting to me

I started run/walking again on 1 May 2007, which means that in 2.5 months I will have been "training" steadily for a full year, with the biggest break being Christmas and that was for three weeks.

It seems that since about September I have been getting steadily slower. There could be good reasons for this, like the heat and humidity, but it doesn't help my state of mind. I'm painfully aware that if I'd had a normal heart the chances are with the effort and commitment I've put in I would already be running half marathons! At the moment I don't even feel like I can walk a 10km... ok thats not entirely true, I'm still getting rid of the last symptoms of my flu, and if it weren't for that I'm sure walking the 10km would have been fine.

I wish there was a way to be more scientific about this, but all I can rely on is what my body tells me. When I've brought the running intervals back down to 20s and still I find myself getting lightheaded on easy inclines, I become a bit despondent. I have started to doubt whether this is actually doable. I believe that on the whole I have all the will power necessary, but there are physical bounds in which I must work. Can I really complete the 21 in under 3 hours?

Anyway, this is me having a low day. I'm busy hating a few people, who I blame for me being in this situation. It will pass.

Sorry I've been so scarce

For the few of you that do read this blog, perhaps you've been wondering what happened to me, or where I have been. Well I just seem to have had lots of work to do lately, and perhaps things haven't felt like they are going as well as I'd hoped they would. In short, I've been feeling kind of lousy about my running the past few weeks. It hasn't stopped me though.

Two or three weeks ago I was feeling so lethargic (all day long) that I went to my GP and asked him if he could think of anything. He listened to my breathing and my heart, ummm'd and ahh'd and couldn't tell me jack. He said maybe my electrolytes were out of balance so he sent me for a stack of blood tests, but these all came back fine, including a bilharzia test I prompted him to do as well (Roodeplaat dam is known to have it).

My bout of whatever seems to have passed but I'm still not feeling as energetic as I was a few months ago. I think there could be numerous reasons. Working late at night, eating badly, stressing about stuff. Perhaps I pushed too hard, or perhaps it's the hotter, more humid weather. I have no idea, whatever it is it's got me a bit down about my 21km goal. Got me doubting whether this thing is really possible. Everyone tells you that if you put your mind to something you will always get there. But in this case... well how do you fix a broken ticker? No amount of willpower and determination is gonna do that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to stop running, or trying. But I think I might take it a bit easier than I have, or try cross training with some cycling. Cycling to me seems to allow you to control your power output much better. If you're struggling up a hill, change to a lower gear, or go slower. You can't do that while running, at least I can't. I'm either running, or walking, there're not gears in between.

Besides the next big thing for me is going to be the Great Mpumalanga Bike ride. I'm going to have to get cycling fit for it, should be a blast. 8 days of slow riding through some awesome scenery. Anyway that's the end of my update, if you really want to you can go ahead and read all the new logs, I'll try keep up to date once more, but with the holidays looming, I doubt it :P

Time trial improvements

I've been training pretty solidly for the past 5 months. I started off pretty slowly, doing about 30km a month and running really short intervals. I started off at about 20s running and 50s walking, which just happened to be the amount of time it took me to run the short edge of a field and walk the long edge. Once I was up to about 4km I was put out to pasture :P. No, I was allowed onto the road. Which was great because it is more entertaining than running in circles.

Once out on the road I was expected to take part in time trials, which entails running around a 2km loop. At the moment I am still only doing 4km time trials. Once I'm more comfy with running longer distances I'll start doing 6km time trials as well. I have only completed 3 time trials so far, I missed one because I was in Cape Town.

So my first time trial took me about 32mins which is 8min/km, my second took 29mins, which is a pace of 7:14min/km, the time trial I did this past Wednesday took me 27:24, which is a pace of 6:51. I would like to be able to run at a pace of 6min/km. I'm pretty sure that my running pace is about that fast, it's just that I walk too much, so as I increase my running times relative to my walking time I should get closer to that 6min/km goal.

An interim goal, before attempting a half marathon will be a sub 1hr 10km, I've wanted to be able to do that for a long time. So that will be the next thing I will work towards.

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.

Canoeing?

Before winter I joined a local canoeing club, but canoeing is a lot harder than you might expect. Staying in the boat is quite a challenge for a beginner, especially in a K1 (single man canoe). A K2 is much easier to balance in but my paddling partner was studying for exams like the ENTIRE winter and I'm not very partial to cold water, so I gave it up for winter.

Yesterday, however was a wicked day to start again, weather wise, and the exams were over. So we went out for a little paddle and found that our arms had turned back into useless rubber bands, we went for about 40 minutes and did about 3km. Today I feel like some evil torture master tied me to rack and stretched my arms REAL good.

So should I be canoeing as well? I think if I can maintain both running and canoeing I should have a well rounded exercise program, and I think starting it again after 4 months of running it will be good, at the moment it is less of a cardio workout than a muscle conditioning exercise. It should help strengthen my core muscles, which in turn should help my running. To be able to canoe for cardio is going to take some time, when I stopped in April, I was quite comfy paddling about 4km, hopefully I'll stick to it through summer and be good enough to continue through next winter too. It's always been something I've wanted to be able to do. I'll be canoeing on Tuesdays and Saturdays probably, so I will add those to my exercise stats, probably from next week