Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Bits and Pieces

Yoo Hoo! Yes I'm still here, haven't disappeared off on holiday again (if only!) just been busy busy busy at work and barely getting enough time to exercise let alone blog about it. Hmm, so since last I blogged I planned a lovely 13km run for last weekend which was going to be a trial to see if I could do the 14km this Sunday at Kakepuku - but totally failed to get out and do it (combination of the usual factors - couldn't go out early due to stomach problems and the day just got hotter and hotter so by the time I could go out it was about 3pm and insane weather for running). Sunday I planned to get out running early as I had to be at the hockey turf for 11 for our first muster of the season - well, I got to the muster.... although as it turned out that had started at 10 and we were an hour late. How was I to know, I'm only the club secretary for heaven's sake, and just because I'd sent round the email to everyone else with the date and time doesn't mean I actually read it....... Hmph. So I had a 15 min run around on the hockey pitch, unsurprisingly my shoulder didn't take too kindly to it but it was really only sweep hitting that was painful so I carried on with my current plan of ignoring it.
Monday I had half an hour on the lovely precor machine at the gym again - I really am loving this machine, followed by some weights and abs, and yesterday I should've been running with mc but was too bleah. Rather than beating myself up at my lack of running at the moment I've decided to chill and enjoy the rest, I'll be starting my half-marathon training for Huntly again in a week or so, so until then I'll just mix up what I do and enjoy the break.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The Hills are Alive ....

I'm still undecided about doing the second run in the summer series which is the Kakepuku run in Te Awamutu on Sunday 28th. Chest thing is pretty much gone now thankfully (just a little bit of wheezing today), but it's 14km and I haven't run that far for aaaaages and also it's a really really hilly course. I suspect I won't make up my mind until the day and enter on the day if I feel like it. To help make up my mind, and also just in case I do enter, I replaced my Thursday stair intervals with hill intervals! So while BIP ran up and down the stairs I ran up and down the hill - I think she had to work harder in all honesty but hill practice is more useful to me right now than fitness.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Wheeeeeeeeze

Ok so maybe that's a slight exaggeration, my chestiness is in fact clearing up (humidy induced??) and I managed Tuesday night's run with the mc crew without requiring resuscitation. I did find that steep hills were to be avoided though as once I started breathing too heavily it felt like someone was stomping on my chest while at the same time trying to squeeze my lungs out through my throat (aah asthma how I miss you!), but as long as I kept to a steady pace and reasonably flat all was well. This morning I did a circuit and have a new approach to my shoulder which is that I'll do anything that doesn't hurt - including the things that my (ex) physio told me to avoid. Will see what effect this has on things, the osteopath treatment does seem to be having an effect and it's better than it has been for a couple of month - maybe it's actually getting better!!

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Something Different

After my non blog about my non run yesterday I headed to the gym today to see if I could find something to do that would cheer me up a bit. They have a new piece of equipment, the Precor AMT 100i which is a combined stair climber and cross trainer. Basically you determine which sort of action you perform depending on how you step and use your arms. I started off with stair climbing which is an up and down leg movement with no arms, and then alternated 5 minute intervals between stair climbing and cross training (which uses forward striding motions and arms). I went for 30 mins and it was a pretty good workout, I was certainly sweating plenty (mmmm, nice image). My heartrate sat between 135 and 150 so not at fast running level but above jogging. Once I'd finished that I did some free weights and abs. There aren't too many free weights I can do with my (still dodgy) shoulder but enough to get by. I seem to be coming down with some sort of cough/chesty thing which is very odd as I don't feel at all unwell, just have this intermittant and very annoying cough which causes a really tight feeling in my chest. I suspect this was partly the problem yesterday. Hopefully it will amount to nothing as I generally fight most bugs off before they settle in.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

A Full Set of Stairs

Thursday morning = stair intervals with BIP again. This week we reintroduced the mini hill sprints between sets of stairs and finished with the full long hill, so back up to doing the full thing. Also managed to do the lap round the playing fields at a reasonable speed, so all in all a successful workout. A busy weekend ahead - Dog show at the Highland tattoo in Paeroa on Saturday and marshalling for the blueberry run on Sunday - means I probably won't have time for a run so I'm planning to try and fit one in this evening after work, I'd like to get out for at least an hour and see if I can start getting my longer distance fitness working again. Also means more wear and tear on 'those' shoes too ....

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Tuesday Night's MC Run

To be honest I wasn't expecting great things on my Tuesday night run with marathon clinic after Sunday's hard and long (er than expected) run. However it wasn't too bad all in all. We set out as a fairly large group, me, JB2, LJ, Moro, Lego, USAP and a newbie who's name I didn't catch (saving me the trouble of anonymising him!). We headed off towards the Uni (great, just what I need after a hard day of work, running back to work!) and then after heading round the playing fields split up. Lego & newbie headed off one way (Lego had done the Pukekohe half on Sunday so was taking it easy). LJ, Moro and JB2 decided they wanted to head out via Ruakura for a longer run but I wasn't in the mood to make what was turning into an ok run into anything harder, so headed back to the club by myself. Took it fairly easy and had to walk a couple of blocks here and there but in general pretty good. Not sure how/when I'm going to fit in a run this weekend as we're off to Paeroa with the dogs on Saturday and on Sunday I'm on refreshment duty at the blueberry run. Oh, and the really good news of the week is that WHT are starting to wear at the heel and at this rate will need replacing sooner rather than later :-)

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Too Hot, Too Far

Next weekend sees the start of the summer series, 3 set of runs organised by running groups in the area at different locations. The first, which is next Sunday, is the Blueberry Run in Ohaupo which is organised by the marathon clinic. So as we have to be on duty for the run, marshalling, running water stands etc. the tradition is to go out a week earlier and do the run ourselves. The really keen (aka crazy) runners go out at about 6am to avoid the heat of the day, which would be a sensible idea except it's 6am!!! On a Sunday!!! The slightly less deranged (me and JB2) headed out at 10am which was a much more civilised hour, but boy oh boy did it get hot! I was planning on doing 10km and JB2 was doing the full 17km. Wonky B had come out in his car to do water stops for us so I decided to run the 17km route with JB2 and then hop into WB's car after 10km. As it happened I got talked into staying after the 10km water stop for another 3km so ended up doing 13km - ugh! I can honestly say that it was a struggle - even the 10km was a struggle. This time last year I did the 17km with ease - well, maybe not with ease, but a darn sight easier than this year's efforts! Maybe by the third run in the series I'll just about manage to drag myself round the 12km! I spent the rest of Sunday seriously overheated and discovered this morning that I still had a face like a  tomato despite copious amounts of sunscreen!
For those of you following the 'shoulder saga' I was back at the physio this morning (ker-ching!) and she is now referring me to a sports physician to arrange a cortisone injection. I will in the meantime be booking in to see a hypnotherapist, witch-doctor and podiatrist (just in case it's a referred pain).

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Worth Getting Out of Bed For

Stairs intervals this morning. Despite the fact that I really really didn't want to get out of bed this morning when the alarm went off at 6am (lack of sleep due to humidity and shoulder) I managed to drag myself up and out and along with BIP managed an interval session on the management stairs. It was definitely the best time of day to do it as was relatively cool. Haven't done stairs since the really hard session just before we went on holiday and I'm pleased to report it was a lot easier today. Poor BIP was struggling though as she'd done a serious interval session yesterday morning and had hockey training last night so was too worn out to give it too much oomph. Did 5 sets of stairs (one block at double stride, one block at single) but didn't do the mini hill sprints in between. Finished with the full big hill though, and then a lap of the playing fields to 'cool down'. By the time we'd finished and showered it was already one of those days where the combination of being overheated along with the ambient temperature meant it was virtually impossible to get dry after my shower - damp and red-faced, mmmmm nice start to the working day.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

2 In a Row Don't Go

Monday was a mad venture, a speed interval run on the road. It had been a fairly cool (by recent standards) day - and not raining either, so seemed like a good opportunity for some hard work. Needless to say the minute I stepped outside in my running gear the humidity ramped up by about 90% and I was damp and exhausted before I even made it to the end of the drive! Living in a rural area means we have white road edge markers at 50m intervals all along our road which is a useful training aid for intervals. Workout consisted of a 5 min warm up jog, then 5 x intervals of fast running for 100m followed by recovery jog of 100m, then a couple of minutes recovery jogging before a second set of shorter intervals 5 x 50m fast running with 50 m recovery. Then finally another 5 mins of slow jogging to cool down (ha! not much cooling down occurred).
I definitely did some work as my quads were feeling it by Tuesday -- not a good start to mc running day. Tues evening was again very hot and humid, luckily JB2's madness saved me a little as she'd done a mountain race at the weekend and then spent Monday doing a 14 km run followed by a 90 min climb of Mt Te Aroha!! (and people think I'm crazy ...) - needless to say she wasn't in the mood for much of a hard run Tues night so the two of us stuck together and did an hour's easy run (with plenty of walking breaks) which still felt ridiculously hard. Day off training today (yay!) just trying to decide if I'm up to stairs intervals tomorrow - guess I'll see if I can get out of bed early enough first.