Wednesday October 3, 2012: My second running career

Daily stuff:

Today marks the start of my second running career.

Running hasn’t been going well almost for a year now and I started the 7 weeks to 5K program again today, I had some thoughts about it during that run this morning. I know I can run a 5K, a 10K, a 10 miler, I even trained for a half marathon. I can do that once running is going well. But it’s not good for me to keep looking back to what has been. It’s better to look forward and first work towards a 5K without walk breaks and in a faster time. Once I’ve done that, it’s time to look at what’s next. One step at a time, one run at a time. There will still be bad runs but my goal is that from this point on my running will go better than the past year.

Tomorrow is going to be a fun day. My manager and I have organized an afternoon/evening for our franchisees. We’re going to the Tennis Classics. The Tennis Classics is a tournament played by retired tennis stars. We start with a lunch followed by a presentation by Jacco Eltingh (multiple grand slam winner at the doubles). After that we will watch the first tennis match between Richard Krajicek (Dutch tennis player who wonWimbledononce) and Carlos Moya. Then it’s dinner time and after dinner there’s a double between Mansour Bahrami/Paul Haarhuis and Goran Ivanisevic/Raymond Sluiter followed by a match between Andrei Medvedev and Ivan Lendl.

Unfortunate Pat Cash (who I found so cute when I was young) is injured and replaced by Andrei Medvedev whom I don’t know that well.

After the last match we will have drinks and then it’s time to go home. It’s going to be a long day (first I have a meeting in the morning) but I think it will be fun too. I will try to make as many photos as I can.

Workouts:

I’m a lousy stretcher. When I do a DVD I do the stretching after the workout but I hardly stretch after a run. One of the workouts of X-TrainFit is stretching that I did yesterday morning and I have to say it felt very good to do nothing more than stretching for a while.
Total time: 26 minutes.

As said, this morning I started 7 weeks to 5K again and it went very well.

I do find something very annoying of running in the dark. I wear a yellow safety jacket over my running jacket, I wear lights and in a few weeks I’m going to use my head lamp again. I make sure cars and bikers see me. But I see a lot of bikers in the morning that don’t use the lights on their bike and that’s annoying, not to mention dangerous. There’s nothing I would love to do more than yell at them that they need to put their lights on but it’s dark and early and you never know if someone gets angry and I don’t want to take the risk of getting attacked. But it sure is annoying.

Stats:
Run-walk ratio: 3-2-3-2-4-3-4-3-3-2 (17 minutes running, 12 minutes walking)
Weather:rain, windy,11C(51 degrees)
Distance: 3.9 K / 2.5 miles
Time: 00:30:25
Last song on Ipod before finish: TheJacksons – Can you feel it

Tuesday Dinner 

I made a recipe from my Light Cooking magazine: steak tartare with the sides rolled through crushed nuts, potatoes with herbs and red onion out of the oven and stir-fried spinach with garlic and pine nuts. It was delicious.

Book I’m reading

George R.R. Martin
A Song of Fire and Ice – Book 4 A Feast for Crows

TV shows I watched last week
Game of Thrones,Dallas, Parenthood, The Mentalist, True Blood, Mad Men, Necessary Roughness.

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Wednesday July 25 – 2012, The Workout Edition

Countdown to half marathon: 88 days

Thursday

Jillian Michaels, Ripped in 30, level 2. Like the 30 day Shred this has 3 circuits of 3 minutes strength, 2 minutes cardio and 1 minute abs. I like this concept because you can do anything for 3, 2 or 1 minute and you don’t give up that easily
Total time: 38 minutes.

Friday
Rest.

Saturday
Long run. This run went great, I felt good and I enjoyed the run. I took walk breaks after every 1.5 k (about 1 mile). The weather was perfect too. I also started using gels again, when I run more than 10K I’m using gels. I forgot how good they work after you took one, it kept the second part of my run as strong as the first part.

Stats:
Weather:dry, not much wind, 18C (64 degrees)
Distance: 11.2 K / 7 miles
Time: 01:20:40
Average time: 07:12 /km
Average speed: 8.33 km/hour
Last song on Ipod before finish: Michael Jackson – Another part of me.

Sunday

X-Trainfit Yoga. Great workout although my leg muscles felt very tight at first from all the running. I should do yoga more but I don’t like it that much to do it very often. Every now and then works better for me.
Total time: 42 minutes.

Monday
Recovery week. After every 3 weeks of training hard I have planned a recovery week: lower mileage, all easy runs and less DVD workouts. Today I did an easy run, without walk breaks this time.

Stats:
Weather:dry, not much wind, 15C (59 degrees)
Distance: 3.2 K / 2 miles
Time: 00:22:26
Average time: 07:01 /km
Average speed: 8.56 km/hour
Last song on Ipod before finish: Lady Gaga – Judas

Tuesday
Rest.

Wednesday
I had a short run planned but after working in the garden for 3 hours Tuesday night my lower back and upper legs were very sore when I got up this morning. Since it’s recovery week I don’t mind that much skipping this run.

Bella and Fran’s Summer challenge: walk at least 30 minutes every day

Days till the end of Summer: 66 days

Success: 5 days
Fail: 3 days

We had a great walk in the forest this week on Sunday of 1 hour and 27 minutes.

We missed Monday’s walk. Bella was with my Mom that day and R. picks her up after work. He was working late and therefore Bella was late too. We also missed yesterday and today’s walk because temperatures are around 32C / 89 degrees here since Monday. That’s too hot for dogs to walk long distances because their feet gets too hot and they can’t cool down. Since it will be this hot tomorrow and Friday I don’t think we will have long walks till Saturday.

Weekly review
Happy with my workouts but happy it’s recovery week too. I was looking forward to the “break”.

Wednesday May 16 – 2012, The Workout Edition

Thursday

Yogalates Energizer, lower body. After not feeling too well on Wednesday this was just the workout I need.
Total time: 32 minutes.

Friday

Rest.

Saturday

 

It’s becoming more a normal thing than an exception: a bad run. I had a wedding the night before, I took it easy on the alcohol but we went to bed late and I was on my feet (high heels) all night. I woke up tired but did go out for a run because the weather was gorgeous. But it didn’t go well, I was tired and my calf was hurting again.

But enough with the excuses. I’m going to take better care of myself and my calf and plan my runs better. If I have a party or something I will plan my run before the party instead of the day after.

Stats:
Weather:dry, sunny, windy, 10C (50 degrees)
Distance: 3.8 K / 2.3 miles
Time: 00:28:49
Average time: 07:35 /km
Average speed: 7.91 km/hour
Last song on Ipod before finish: Michael Jackson – Off the wall

Sunday

Rest

Monday

 

 

Chalean time. I did 2 workouts. The first was Burn it off and is a HITT workout. Great workout although I said no to the burpees she offered. Those are so hard (right Shelley?). I still can’t do them. After that I did a workout called Recharge that is a stretch workout for about 20 minutes. So good, I love a good stretch every now and then.
Total time: 47 minutes.

Tuesday

This was taken at 6 am, I love it how light it is during my morning runs now.

 

Tempo run. Total running time went to 35 minutes this week (last week 30 minutes) and the tempo intervals from 3 to 4 minutes. Today I had to do 1 tempo interval of 4 minutes (next week 2 and so on).
This was a good run! I felt good (except from soreness in my but from Monday’s workout) and my calf didn’t hurt at all. Came home happy!

Stats:
Weather:dry, bit of wind, 8C (46 degrees)
Distance: 5.1 K / 3.1 miles
Time: 00:35:16
Average time: 06:55 /km
Average speed: 8.68 km/hour
Last song on Ipod before finish: Melissa Etheridge – I run for life.

Wednesday

 X-TrainFit Cardio. I did some other workouts from this program, that were weight workouts for a particular body part. Today it was just Cardio and I found this workout pretty boring. A lot of the same and all cardio (like jumping jacks, speed skaters, and so on). Since I’m a believer that you have to do something you like otherwise you probably stop doing it, I won’t do this workout again.
Total time: 46 minutes.

Weekly review

I switched my runs this week. Normally I run on Monday and Wednesday but this week on Tuesday and Thursday. This is because tomorrow it’s Ascension Day which is a Christian holiday here in Holland, which means my weekend has already started today. My company is closed on Friday (so is R’s) and we have a 4-day weekend.

Poor Bella, I haven’t walked with her that much. We did short walks everyday but I only “count” the longer walk in a day. I just didn’t feel much like walking, especially not at the weekend. I’ll make it up to her next week.

I want to thank you all for your positive and lovely comments on my Monday post. I still think I made the right decision. Come back on Friday when I reveal my new project that is all about cooking.

 

Wednesday April 25 – 2012, The workout edition

WARNING: LONG POST!

Thursday

The Firm Express Sculpt. Short weights workout that targeted a little bit of every bodypart.
Total time: 20 minutes.

Friday and Saturday

Rest.

Sunday

Sherpa Ladies Run, for a short recap see my post on Monday.

Garmin time: 00:33:32
Official time: 00:33:42
Place: 510 out of 715.

Photo’s still not online.

Stats:
Weather:dry but also rain, sunny, windy, 10C (50 degrees)
Distance: 5 K / 3.1 miles
Time: 00:33:32
Average time: 06:42 /km
Average speed: 8.9 km/hour
Last song on Ipod before finish: Bonnie Tyler – Holding out for a hero.

Monday

X-TrainFit Arms. Workout completely focussed on triceps, biceps and shoulders. Two sets of exercises. This is really a good program. I like the instructor and there are always 3 people doing various modifications of the exercise. I usually do the most difficult one but if it’s too hard, it’s nice that you can do a modification and still finish the exercise.
Total time: 48 minutes.

Tuesday

First tempo run of my new schedule. I’ll explain next week what a tempo run means for me. Today was the first day I could run outside the village and how I missed that. No traffic, just the early birds and other animals and ¾ of the run daylight. Enjoyed my run very much.

Stats:
Weather:dry, not much wind, 8C (46 degrees)
Distance: 4.4 K / 2.7 miles
Time: 00:30:04
Average time: 06:50 /km
Average speed: 8.8 km/hour
Last song on Ipod before finish: Boys Town Gang – Can’t take my eyes of you.

Wednesday

Jillian Michaels Banish Fat Boost Metabolism. This is a cardio workout, it’s split up in 7 circuits of 6 minutes. I didn’t do them all, just 4 out of 7 and the warming-up and cooling down. This is not her best DVD but still okay enough to do it again.
Total time: 37 minutes.

Weekly review

What’s next?

After 2 DNF’s last year (due to the weather) and not starting at the half marathon I signed up in October, I had a kind of mental running breakdown as you know. It has taken me about 6 months to get my running mojo back and after last Sunday I am convinced it’s back.

It’s amazing how fast you can lose your running base if you don’t run enough and it took me a while before I could run 30 minutes straight again (most of that was mental) and last Sunday I ran the 5K without walking.

But most of my runs in the past months have been about the same distance over and over again and the risk of doing that, is that I get bored. And getting bored means skipping workouts in my case. I need a new goal and different kind of runs. Running without looking at the pace helped me a lot in getting my running base back and listen to my body. In that way it has been good I did it.

Till this morning it wasn’t the plan I was going to tell you but my blogger friend Shelley who ran a 5K without breaks in the same week as I did (which we didn’t know from each other), who ran a 5K without walking breaks last weekend too (again we didn’t know), came with an announcement in her post today with her plan which is exactly my plan (yes you’re right: we didn’t know it from each other).

I’m going to train for a half marathon again.

The original plan was to start training for it and mention it a week before it or something like that. R. thinks I shouldn’t do it and work on getting faster on 5K and 10K but running a half marathon is always in the back of my mind. I just want to finish at least one in my life. Right now, I’m injury free, I’m healthy and I did love the training part for the half marathon. But like Shelley, I’ll start with it and see how it goes.

I’ve chosen a very safe plan this time. It’s a 28 week plan but I start at week 4. The reason the program is so long is that you build up the long runs slowly and do most distances 2 or more times which is good for my confidence. I worked it all out considering my vacation in June, recovery weeks and a 10K I do want to do in September. The plan is to run the half in October. I have 6 months to get ready, that may seem long but I like it. I might do some local races during those 6 months but I decided about those a week before the event takes place.

The plan comes with paces you should use at the different kind of runs. I’m going to use the paces that go with a 31 minute time on a 5K. I have never run that time but the paces that go with that I have run a lot during training. The hardest part will be that I have to run slower on my longer runs than I do now. I’ve compared the paces of my program with the McMillan calculator and they correspond a lot.

Of course I’ll keep you posted how it goes in my workout edition posts.

And I’m closing this last post for my running fashionista’s: one of my running sets needed to be replaced and this is the new set I bought. A very light windjacket, a Capri and two sleeveless tops.

 

Wednesday March 28 – 2012, The workout edition

Thursday

Thursday = short workout day. Did a The Firm Express workout: cardio + sculpt. I do like this DVD’s but there’s one thing I don’t like. The workouts are short and all the exercises are short too. I would have preferred it if they did less exercises so you could do more of the same. But overall it’s a good short workout.
Total time: 20 minutes.

Friday

Rest.

Saturday

Tough run because I needed to break the mental block in my head that I could run more than 8K (5 miles). And I didn’t do a longer run last weekend. But I gave it a try and I did it. Intervals 15:1 but I stopped twice to catch my breath. Since I don’t watch my pace at the moment during runs I was more than surprised to see my overall pace afterwards, much faster than I thought I was, haven’t run much at this pace this year.
The weather was absolutely perfect for running, best weather for a run so far this year.
Very happy with this run.

Stats:
Weather:dry, sunny, hardly any wind, 9C (48 degrees)
Distance: 9.6 K / 6 miles
Time: 01:04:59
Average time: 06:46 /km
Average speed: 8.8 km/hour
Last song on Ipod before finish: The Fratellis – Chelsea Dagger.

Sunday

X-TrainFit workout: hardcore. A mat workout with only core exercises. Great workout.
Total time: 54 minutes.

Monday

Early morning run, it was dark again because the clock went an hour forward Saturday night but hopefully in a few weeks I’ll be running in daylight again in the morning. Nothing special about this run, it was just a good run. Intervals: 16:1.

Stats:
Weather:dry, not much wind, 5C (41 degrees)
Distance: 5 K / 3.1 miles
Time: 00:35:16
Average time: 07:03 /km
Average speed: 8.5 km/hour
Last song on Ipod before finish: Guns ‘n Roses – Sweet child of mine

Tuesday

Turbofire: HITT 25 + Stretch 10. An intense HITT cardio workout of 25 minutes followed by a nice stretch for 10 minutes.
Total time: 35 minutes.

Wednesday

Rest. My body felt very tired Monday and Tuesday and I decided Tuesday night I needed an extra rest day to recover.

Weekly review

Very pleased with last week results, especially with Saturday’s run. It was a good training week.

 

 

Wednesday February 8 – 2012, The workout edition

Thursday
Ultimate Yogalates workout. Yogalates is a combination of yoga and Pilates exercises and I like this more than a regular yoga workout which bores me easily.
Total time: 22 minutes.

Friday
Active rest day. Active because I cleaned my house in the morning, walked with Bella in the snow for 40 minutes in the afternoon and cleaned the driveway for 30 minutes.

Saturday
I had a run planned but skipped it. I went out with Bella in the morning and my face almost froze and I was outside for just 10 minutes. I’ll sit this cold weather out and will run again when it’s less cold.

Sunday
Rest day.

Monday
Recovery week is over, back to 3 weeks of full training. Started this Monday with a X-Trainfit workout, completely focussed on the legs. Great workout.
Total time: 53 minutes.

Tuesday
The Firm Bootcamp maximum calorie burn. Great workout, combination of 3 plyometric sessions and 3 cardio sessions with some abs exercises at the end.
Total time: 51 minutes.

Wednesday
After checking the weather several times a day, Tuesday night would be less cold than the other nights this week and I knew that if I wanted to run this week it had to be this morning. And so I did.
It wasn’t that cold except when I got outside the village where there was more wind. I took and out and back route on a bike path that was clean. The sidewalks and a lot of roads (the street where I live f.e.) aren’t snow free. I had a 30 minute run planned and that’s what I did. After 2 days with lots of legs exercises my legs felt surprisingly well. It was a good run.

Stats:
Weather:dry, some wind wind, -2C (28 degrees)
Distance: 4.4 K / 2.7 miles
Time: 00:30:29
Average time: 06:56 /km
Average speed: 8.5 km/hour
Last song on Ipod before finish: Lady Gaga – Hair.

Weekly review
I didn’t run the 2 runs I had planned last week because of the cold weather. Also last week was a recovery week meaning less workouts. But I picked it up again on Monday and am very pleased with my workouts the past 3 days.

Wednesday January 18 – 2012, The workout edition

Thursday
First time I tried a workout from the program “The Firm Express” that I recently bought. This set has 13 DVD’s with workouts. Every workout is approx. 20 minutes. It is short but intensive. I felt my muscles in my arms and legs later in the day. Love this workout too.
Total time: 21 minutes.

Friday
I had planned Jillian Michaels yoga meltdown level 1 that is approx. 30 minutes. But a combination of being sore and very tired had me finish this one before the end. Better luck next time.
Total time: 11 minutes.

Saturday
Saturday is my long run day. Because I started a 10K program this week, it was actually kind of short, only 6.4K (4 miles). But it was a great run. Weather was perfect for running and the run itself went easy. I’m trying to run my long runs around 7:00/km and I succeeded.

Stats:
Weather:dry, cloudy, hardly any wind, 5C (41 degrees)
Distance: 6.4 K / 4 miles
Time: 00:44:42
Average time: 6:59 /km
Average speed: 8.6 km/hour
Last song on Ipod before finish: U2 – Sunday Bloody Sunday

Sunday
Active rest day. After 6 days of working out my body told me it needed a break. I didn’t workout but I did walk with Bella because the weather was so good for January.

Monday
Did a workout from the program called X-TrainFit. This exists of 8 DVD’s with various workouts. Monday I did the chest and back DVD. It had 3 sets of various exercises for the back and chest (lots of push ups). I liked this workout, the instructor explained the exercises very well and she was no-nonsense.
Total time: 1 hour and 3 minutes.

Tuesday
I totally slept through my alarm this morning. By the time I woke up it was a bit late and I thought about skipping my planned run. But then I thought that a short run is always better than no run at all and I did go. It was cold but luckily no wind. Afterwards I was glad I decided to go instead of skipping it.

Stats:
Weather:dry, no wind, fog, -2C (28 degrees)
Distance: 2 K / 1.2 miles
Time: 00:14:18
Average time: 7:09 /km
Average speed: 8.4 km/hour
Last song on Ipod before finish: Stevie Wonder – I wish.

Wednesday
Zumba time! What a fun workout to start my day with.
Total time: 46 minutes.

Weekly review
Very happy with my workouts this week.

I have changed my running schedule, meaning I made my own schedule for the first 6 months of this year. When I look back at my average mile per month last year, it seems I had a kind of running burn-out the last couple of months. I don’t want that to happen this year and thought about what would work best for me.

I love to use a training plan for running. I like it when I know what en when I have to run. Most internet schedules are “fast”. By fast I mean that you have a schedule for 8 weeks and in these 8 weeks your weekly long run is longer every week. My experience last year is that I don’t really like that, I prefer to do a certain distance twice before I move to the next step, it gives me more time to get used to distances and it builds my confidence.

That’s how I build my new training plan: every distance for my long run and my pace run I will run twice. The first time I run the distance for the long run it will be slow, the second time I’m using the 3/1 method: run ¾ easy and ¼ in pace tempo. On a weekday I will do a tempo run or do speedwork.

After every 3 weeks I have a recovery week in which I cut back on the mileage.

For now I will be running 3 times a week and do a DVD workout 3 times a week. My upper body strength is very weak and I need to work on that because I know it will benefit my performance in running too. Maybe when it is light again in the morning I switch to 4 times running and 2 times a DVD workout but I’ll see about that when that day comes.

The plan I made feels very good for me and I hope it will get me to PR on a 5K and 10K race which are my short-term goals.