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

900km!!

Just a quicky to note that yesterday I went over 900km! Check out the "RUNNING (and walking) TOTAL" in the left panel. Ok so it's taken more than a year, but I think by the end of September I'll probably be over 1000km! And thats almost an average of 60km a month for 15 straight months... I think I must be nuts!

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?

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.

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

Running in the rain

While most people were running scared to the shelter of their homes yesterday, I was running around Pretoria getting rained on and nearly struck by lightening. It was awesome!! But I am finding this weather rather annoying, it's interfering with my running dammit. I missed Friday's run and now most of yesterday's run. I only did one 2km loop before we decided that it was looking really ominous, 30 seconds later it started hailing, so we were right.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful, because we need the rain, but could it just rain at more convenient times please!

Hill training and cardiologists!

I was less than delighted yesterday when the coach/manager suggested that we do hill training. The Boys High route has a nice hill half way through the route, with 0,100 and 200m market out. So we were expected to do this hill 4 times. I had some serious shin splints on the way out and was not a happy camper. We just continued as we would, running when my watch beeped, walking when it beeped again, not caring if it was uphill or down.

Inevitably there was one running interval that started at the bottom of the hill... I ran the whole 200m hill! I was so surprised, I just went, there was no ragged breathing, no faintness, no burning legs. The ladies started walking one after the other, but I just ran, it was the most awesome feeling!! The simple things in life.

There's no doubt that I'm getting a lot fitter. I remember struggling to walk up 2 flights of stairs! Well I hope to keep that a thing of the past. I'm going to see a cardiologist next week, not because there is anything wrong. It's just time, I think it's been almost a year since my last visit, and the paranoid dude inside me says that this can't be right, something must be going wrong. So hopefully he puts me on a treadmill, wires me up and then tells me I'm nuts, but my heart is fine (well within limits). Actually chances are that he will just do an ECG and an echocardiogram.

I'm actually a little nervous, I've done this a hundred times before, been poked and prodded by cold hands. Had what little chest hair I have ripped off by those super sticky electrical pads, oh and a lot more of my less sparse leg hair! I've even had shock therapy :P ... no not for the madness... read the article about the various procedures I've had in particular cardioversions.

So why am I nervous? What if he tells me to take it easy, or to stop running? I'm enjoying this so much! That would seriously suck! Wish me luck. 

The gang is growing!

I started off running alone and that was all good, especially in the beginning, because I could go at my own pace and feel comfortable doing how I wanted to. But about 2 months ago someone joined me! She decided she liked the interval training and would run with me, then about a month ago another lady joined me.

This was the trio that ran a 10km last Saturday. But for the past few runs there has been another lady that has been trying to join me as well. It seems like yesterday she joined us properly, so now we are a gang of 4. I've had numerous requests from the runners to join them, but at the moment I'm quite happy doing what I'm doing and it seems that this is making other people happy as well.

The bonus is that I have control of the reigns, I tell them how my watch is set, but that doesn't mean I have to stick to it. On Saturday in the race I'd set it up for 1min running and 2min walking. But towards the end I started running earlier, so that the running interval was longer and the rest interval shorter. I think it allowed us to catch up some time, and no-one complained. hehehe

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!

Strange that....

I went for my run yesterday, I was on time, there were no items lost in transit. A few minutes in to the run I noticed that I wasn't feeling too strong, my heart rate got up quicker than usual, and then was elevated more than usual (136 vs 132bpm). It should have clicked but I rather tried to justify this with many things.

Firstly I had had a pie for lunch, shock shock horror! I'm a bachelor, I cook for myself, usually low fat, low salt, low GI type food. The trick is to make it go as far as possible so I don't have to cook often. I quite like cooking, but I hate cleaning up afterwards. So I usually make as much as possible and freeze leftovers in meal size portions, taking these to work for lunch or I eat them when I feel too lazy to cook in the evenings. The point is that I usually don't eat pies, they are full of fat and salt and they give me heart burn... but once in a while they are SO GOOOD! I thought perhaps the pie was cramping my style... something to do with blood sugar levels.

Next I thought I could have some trouble with the amount of fluids in my body, as I have mentioned this needs to be tightly controlled. Too much and I start coughing as it starts draining into my lungs. Too little and I get headaches. I was leaning towards the too much fluid side of things, the amount of fluid I retain is directly related to the amount of salt I eat and it just felt like perhaps my salt consumption had been too much this passed week. But this was also not a very convincing argument.

Then I thought that perhaps I was increasing my running interval too much. I had increased it from 45s on Friday to 50s on Monday to 55s on Wednesday, of course there was a matching increase in my rest interval, but still it is almost a 20% increase in running time in the space of 6 days. So I thought perhaps this was ambitious.

Anyway I didn't feel like I couldn't carry on, I just felt like there was something slightly amiss. I continued to do the 5km run, and as I found out later it was slightly better than my previous time for the same route. My routine when I get back from a run is to take my meds for the evening and then go for a shower. I take quite a few tabs so I dish them out into one of those weekly container things, so I only have to do it once a week... sounds like I should have a walking stick, I know! Anyway I picked up the container and noticed that I hadn't taken any meds yesterday morning! So there was my explanation, I take 4 types of meds, the first is an anticoagulant, preventing blood clots forming in my heart and getting stuck anywhere else in my body. The second is a very mild diuretic, which helps with fluid retention. The third is a vasodilator which increases the diameter of my blood vessels, lowering my blood pressure and making it easier for my heart to pump blood around my body. The final drug is a beta blocker which basically slows my heart down. 

So I guess the reason I wasn't feeling too strong was that my heart was beating harder and faster, to push thicker blood through smaller blood vessels. But it's not the end of the world, it's not like I do this every day...

The temptation... the disappointment

I started my run really late yesterday, I got home from work, later than usual. I fumbled with the lock, holding my laptop in my other hand, then I double pressed one of the alarm buttons so the damned thing wouldn't disarm! Once I had sorted out that mini crisis, I got changed into my running kit on the double. Once I had my shorts and T-shirt on, I sat down on the couch to change my shoes and socks... then I put on my HR monitor and was ready to go, not to be late for the stretches before the run. I grabbed my car keys and my wallet... but where were my house keys? I spent a full 10 minutes looking on my bed, in the kitchen, under the cushions on the couch that I usually toss my keys on... I even looked in the bathroom and in the cupboards in my bedroom. My place is actually not that much of a mess and things don't usually get lost that easily. Anyway I found them on the couch I had sat on to change my shoes, they had slid down the side. 

I got to RW4L as everyone else was heading out. This means I need to do my stretches myself and then head out on my own after them. The first I see of them is on their way back from either the 4km turn around or the 5km turn around. I continue on to the 5km turn, I'm feeling good, strong, I'm keeping to my intervals, I'm not short of breath, my legs aren't burning... much. I turn around no problems. I've done about 3.5km and I'm jogging back down the long gradual hill that I climbed on the way out. One of the stronger runners comes up behind me in one of my walking intervals, on a normal day he would still be on his way out... he says "come it's not that far back", an interval starts... I run, we chat... it's great! I love running with people! He asks me how far I'm doing today... 5km...that's great he says... we run...I ask him how far he's gone... 8km... are you training for anything? I ask... no, just keeping fit through winter... oh... I will do the two oceans next year though... cool!! The full marathon?...Ja... my running interval ends, we carry on running, it's downhill and I'm still feeling strong, the temptation is to carry on running, it's feels so good, our footfalls keep pace, I'm breathing easily, I feel great, I glance at my watch, HR normal, my rest interval ends! We carry on running, I feel fine...

THIS is the temptation. To carry on when I really shouldn't, but I really don't want to tell him why I won't carry on either... the next running interval ends... we carry on running, I'm loving it, but I decide to stop... I say I'm going to walk a bit, he hesitates, I can see his disappointment, I really want to explain, but I also don't, so I just let him believe whatever it is he thinks... he carries on running.

I finish my run, I walk up to the guy and say thanks for the chat, he says "You must go for longer next time", I nod and smile.