End of Week 3 (?)

It can't be the end of week three already, can it? Or is it week four? I'm losing track. Anyway, what ever plan I may, or, more truthfully, may not have had for this weeks treadmill sessions, has gone completely out of the window. The truth is, I now cannot stomach the thought of going back on the soul destroying, time defying treadmill. This is because I have rediscovered the great outdoors. Since I last wrote, I have ventured outside a further four times, two runs and two bike rides. This officially brings the total to six outings, and a weights day, in the last nine days. Here's a recap of this weeks events since my last blog;

Thursday - Run
Anticipating that my running partner from last week was to cancel our Friday night appointment at the reservoir as he apparently received an injury whilst playing football on the Tuesday (coincidence?), not wanting to miss a day and in a blatant plot of avoiding the treadmill of woe, me and my house mate went for a little outing around one of Bradfords many recreational areas for a steady 3.25mile run, peppered with short walks. The route isn't bad actually for a heavily built up area, and is quite hilly, so it's good practice and is just down the road.
Friday - Run
To my surprise, James stuck to our arrangement despite winging on about this apparent football career jeopardising injury, which amounted, as far as I could see, to be nothing more that a slight bruise. And I'm being generous with my diagnosis. So with the appointment confirmed, it was back to the reservoir for us, with plans grandeur of doing 5 laps. Well, this didn't happen, because by the time we had got there, it was getting dark, and 3 laps later, it was pitch black, which made for some "fun" falling down little dips and trying in vein to avoid squelching kamikaze frogs. BUT, and there is a but, we were successful in completely one full and uninterrupted lap, the full 1.35miles without walking any of it, in a quite respectful 12minutes and 25seconds. What? I don't think that's bad going myself, after all, James was injured for christs sake! (what, I'm not allowed to play his injury card too?) This now of course sets the bench mark for future outings. Trouble is, we're going to have to stop going soon, as winter officially beckons bringing with it shorter and shorter days. We'll have to find a suitably lit route instead, but we've got a few weeks yet I think.
Saturday - Bike ride
In an attempt to escape the madness that is three women arguing over one bathroom, I donned my cycling gear for a pre wedding bike ride. Once again, I headed for the canal, this time in the opposite direction to see where it would take me. You may notice a pattern emerging here. This is because I like canals, as due to the very nature of them, they are flat, and flat is good. They are also quiet, and scenic, and smell nice. Other people, out and about minding their own business, whom you've never met before, greet you, either with a subtle nod of the head, a smile, or a cheery "hello". What more could you ask for on a leisurely ride out? The down side is, short of riding them the length or breadth of the country, they have to end somewhere, meaning normal service will inevitably resume, unless you just turn around and come back again, but where's the adventure in that? In this case, the "normal service" was a bloody big hill. A two mile hill in fact, leaving my quads screaming for mercy, well they would have screamed if they had mouths. Instead they seemed to hatch an escape plan by means of burning through the overlaying flesh and running away. Thwarted they were, as the peak of the hill was reached, eventually. Mountain conquered, I was then rewarded with a nice long descent, which looped back on to the canal from the opposite direction. Aah canals, we salute you.
Here's the route...















Sunday - Bike ride
Today it was back to the canal again, for some more free wheeling fun. I also discovered that the canal which I have been enjoying this week isn't actually a canal at all!! It has been masquerading as a canal all along, and is in fact a river. Sneaky. If you look at the map above, or indeed care enough to look at the map above, you will see that from the West, it is a canal, with a river adjacent to it right up the lock, after which the two merge, making it a river from that point on. Before setting off this afternoon I consulted Google Earth to plan out a route, and here it is,
intending to ride along the "canal" for as long as sensibly possible, and spotted a crossroads in the "canal". Canals don't have cross roads do they? Well as it turns out, no, they do not, firstly because they are obviously not roads, and secondly it's because it's a river system. Ah well, it's still flat, so off I went. What I forgot to check, due to the shock of this discovery, is that there was to be a path for me to follow along the river route. There wasn't, so after a mile or so of overgrown paths through the trees, I ran out of route. Not to be outdone by this, I carried on across grassy fields, sticking close to the river, whilst looking out for irate, shotgun wielding farmers. This ended with me lobbing the bike over a gate and me scaling it, only to see a sign on the other side saying something about trespassing and how it's best for all concerned not to do it. Another section of river, some more blatant trespassing over a viaduct, and I was back to relative civilisation, and hopefully on the right side of the law. Thinking it was best if I lay low for a little while, I continued the remainder of the route on roads. 12.5 miles in 1hour 16minutes or so, not bad considering half of it was definitely what you'd call "off road".

THE CONCLUSION
A good week all round I feel, I'm off of the treadmill and braving the real world, however I'm in danger of focusing too strongly on riding and not enough on the job in hand, running. That said, and even though the distances haven't been great, I have stuck to three running session this week, which I'm pleased with. Next week I'll try and get out on four of the days and just have one stitch prevention gym session on Wednesday. Tomorrow it's back to the reservoir, so we'll just see what that brings.

I want to ride my bicycle...

So I did, on Saturday, although somewhat unintentionally. I packed the bike into my car to take over to my mothers with me, with the sole intention of doing some work to it. The bike itself was given to me a little while ago, needing a full strip down and rebuild. I quite like doing things of this nature, as you may have gathered since I spend just about every weekend restoring a 76 mini, so saw this as another little project to keep me busy over summer. I never thought at the time of taking a "before" picture, but here it is mid build;

Hanging in the professional and clinically clean confines of my shed, complete with decorative antique shovel and old bed frame, whilst the various components dried following the respray...
and here is the end result, all painted and put back together. This has been an extremely cheap little project for me (which is good as the mini frequently empties my pockets), with the only bought items, aside from bearings and paint, being the reproduction stickers courtesy of eBay, a set of hand grips, the bull bars which also conceal multi-tools inside them (fancy!), a set of mud guards, and a basic trip computer, all thanks to Halfords, for less than £100! Bargain! I can't actually remember what model the bike is, as I never thought to pay any attention before stripping all the paint off of the frame, but I think it's a Giant Advantage... or something like that. Plans for the future are to fit it with a set of disk brakes, but as these don't come cheap, they will have to wait. Ye olde V brakes and rubber stop blocks work perfectly fine.

So anyway, Saturday. Well since the rebuild I have been on a couple of short rides, but have been having trouble getting all gears, and since all my tools are in my mums hallway / pantry / loft / bedroom (sorry mum, I will shift it all one day I promise) it made sense to work on the bike there. After tinkering, I decided to take it round the street (with my mum watching from the kitchen window, just like a child) to give it a test... and immediately rode into an overhanging rose bush. Nice. Once I started riding I just carried on, dressed quite inappropriately in a pair of old jeans, skate trainers and a baseball cap.

So here's the route I took:
A relatively sedate route along the canal and back via the local scenery, racking up a gentle 5.5miles in 28 minutes. The weather was nice albeit very windy, in every direction, which defies everything I ever thought I knew about wind. I really enjoy a bit of cycling from time to time and wish I made more effort to get out a bit more frequently, but I must confess to being a bit of a fair weather fairy when it comes to the great outdoors, snowboarding aside. The reason for this enjoyment, it seems, is that I have never grown up, and insist on taking the most difficult way of getting past any obstacle that doesn't have teeth, usually by jumping off or over it. This inevitably ends in injury from time to time, but I doubt I'll learn my lesson any day soon. Another thing about cycling is that no matter how far from home you get, short of getting a taxi back, I have to get home again, so quitting when I get a bit tired just isn't an option. One thing I hate however, is roads, especially pothole ridden excuses for roads. And traffic, well, bad or inconsiderate drivers more accurately, but I could go on about this forever, so instead I avoid the subjects all together and try to stick to off-road routes where ever possible. Plus it's more fun.

I really enjoyed this little re-emergence into my long gone youth, despite being dressed like I'd stolen the bike from someone still very much in their youth, so I have intentionally left it at my mums. We're all off to a wedding on Saturday you see, so while my sisters are fighting over the bathroom and arguing about who's wearing who's shoes, I shall be exploring more of the the countryside at speed before donning my suit and getting drunk.


And now for something completely different

A couple of blogs ago I vented spleen about a reoccurring stitch which has been plaguing me recently, and at the time said that I didn't know what caused them or how I can prevent them. Well, our good friend Google came to the rescue with this, and as it turns out there has been quite a lot of research into this over recent years, and the general consensus seems to conclude that they are caused by the stretching of the ligaments that hold you liver in place, which attach to the diaphragm. The action of running combined with rapid breathing causes the liver to "bounce" downwards whilst the diaphragm is moving upwards stretching the ligaments, causing shooting pains. But I'm sure you all knew this already. As it turns out, there is no magic cure to fix a stitch in the making, but apparently I can prevent them by working on my core muscles. So I've decided that on my rest days between the treadmill / running sessions, I'll spend 45 minutes up in the gym corner of my bedroom, concentrating mainly on abdominal exercises, with a few other bits and pieces thrown in for good measure.
This began last night with 50 sit ups, I lost count but I'd say between 150 and 200 trunk dips with a 20kg weight, 10 elevated push ups, 1o regular push ups, 20 narrow grip chin ups, 5 wide grip chin ups, and a mixture of bench presses, bicep curls, weighted lunges and lateral raises. That's made me sweat a little bit just recalling last nights effort!!

Result? I ache today. Lots. Ah well, my exercise diary on mapmyrun is looking good this week. Next up is 5 laps around the reservoir. Looking forward to it I am. Confident, I am not.

Reservoir Slobs

I am pleased to state that reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. I remain alive, and relatively well. I'm also pleased to report that the run around the reservoir actually went really well, and taking a friend with me was a fantastic idea, as I genuinely enjoyed tonight's outing, as opposed to suffering the treadmill.
I picked said friend up, drove to the reservoir to find the car park full, so took my trusty steed off road and abandoned it in the local foliage. Then we had a fag. As we walked down to the big pond, I panicked when I saw the sheer size of it. It looked far bigger in reality than on Google Earth! Initially we decided to run small sections, and walk small sections, but during the first running stage I became quite aware that there were lots of people around, and didn't want to look silly by stopping and walking blatantly so early on, so just carried on running. I was even beginning to think that we might just complete a full circuit! Surely not? Well, as it turns out, no. Not quite. As we turned a corner I had convinced myself, and my somewhat lagging friend, that the end was at the next corner, so mustered up just enough motivation to get me there. As we arrived, it turned out to not quite be the end, so we stopped for a much deserved walk. James (said friend) had left his water in my car so we walked back up to get it. And have a fag.

Quite pleased at the almost full circuit, we set off for a couple more laps of definite run / walk intervals, walks being considerably longer than the runs as it turns out, but overall I'm quite pleased at how much running was actually done, and more pleased that I know full well I could have run more of it and James was the one who, somewhat surprisingly might I add, was wanting to quit. Now I have to be honest, some of this motivation came from the fact that I took sick pleasure in torturing James, who thought we were going home after lap two. Well I expected him to be fitter than me, he plays squash and football a few times a week. So pleased at my fitter-than-him status, I even decided to rub it in by doing a 200meter(ish) flat out sprint on the third lap. Some of the motivation also came from two young ladies who seem to have adopted a similar run / walk tactic to James and I, and although it wasn't particularly unpleasant to be behind them, there was no way they were running more than me. I may have actually said something to James along the lines of "I'm not sexist or anything, but there's no way I'm losing to two girls". As they set off on their next run, we ran, and I would not let poor James stop until the girls were overtaken and well out of sight. Mission accomplished, we walked a for bit, ran back to the steed to recover it from the undergrowth, had a fag, and set off home.

So overall, really pleased with the result, and slightly taken back at just how different running in the real world is, both in terms of physically and mentally. My calf muscles feel a bit tight, and my breathing seemed to be more of a problem than it is on the treadmill, probably from all the chatting / laughing at James / smoking, but having someone with me made the time fly by. We will be returning on Friday for more of the same, hopefully more running and less walking though, and will be rewarding our selves with a cheeky pint afterwards.

I do have a little more to say about stitches and cycling, but - and since I'm in the swing of being completely honest, I'll continue by saying that - I can't be arsed tonight, I'm tired, so I'm returning back to the dent in the sofa for the remainder of the evening. I'll waffle about the above subjects tomorrow (my rest / moan day).

Ciao for now!

A few choice words...

Namely, f@$king stitches!! Had a really good run last night, up until the 31 minute mark, when I had to quit rather abruptly due to a blinding pain in my gut. The run leading up to this began with a stretch, a 3 minute warm up, followed by a 14 minute run @ 11k/h, a 5 minute walk at 7 k/h, then an 8 minute run, again at 11k/h, all at incline "2". The stitch kicked in part way through the second lot of running, I tried to ignore it as long as possible but it just got worse. Aside from this, I'm quite pleased with how it went

I just cannot figure out what causes them. Initially I thought it could be dehydration, so I made sure I had a good drink a little while before starting. This didn't help, so I went the other way. Decided to not drink too much before starting, and limit my drinking whilst on the treadmill, yet this doesnt seem to have done the trick either.

On Monday I will be venturing outside for a little run. I've recruited an equally unfit friend to join me on this outing, and we will be going here...

Ardsley Reservoir, just a few miles down the road from me (which of course I will be driving to) and according to Map My Run is just under a mile and a half around, so me and said friend have said we'll do "a couple of laps", with a few walks in between I imagine. Note the ease of access via the local roads, this will be handy. For the ambulances. I wonder if you can book one in advance, like a taxi?

So readers (mum), I'll let you know on Monday how dead I am.

Let's face the music (and run?)

The observant of you (hello mum!) may have noticed that my blogs seem to have taken a certain vow of abstinence recently, as, well, there haven't been any. I have been avoiding writing one all week, a little out of shame, but mainly for fear of taking a ripping / rollocking from HMC. There have been no blogs, as there has been no running. I do however have a very good reason for this, well, a reason at least... more of an excuse, if you will.

You see, I had last week off work, and unlike most who take this as an opportunity to have a little R&R, I am not like most, and choose to spend my free time carrying out hard, physical labour. This comes mainly in the form of restoring my 76 mini, which generally involves me kneeling down on a ridged concrete floor for long periods at a time. To add to this, years of subjecting my body to this abuse in my free time, as well as sitting down for a living and as a major past time, have left me with a rather prematurely bad back. So, there we have it, the three separate elements which combined, form my excuse - tired, sore knees, bad back. I did initially try and keep up to week 2 of my plan, having a good run on Monday night which consisted of a 15minute run at 11k/h, followed by 5 minute run / rest intervals for the next half an hour. Attempted the same on Tuesday, managed another 15minute run, but was too knackered and limpy to carry on for another half an hour. Wednesday the plan got abandoned in favour of the excuse.

BUT

I had a good run last night. Normal service has resumed, I am now back at work, and this was marked with a return to the treadmill. The recent spate of laziness didn't initially appear to have taken too much of a toll on me, so I decided to do intervals 0f 7 minutes at 11k/h (incline 2 - however much "2" is) with 3 minute rests at 7 k/h. I managed to keep this up for 35 minutes, but I was beginning to drag my legs, and knowing first hand how much it hurts to fall on a treadmill, decided to call it a night. I was quite pleased with this despite the premature end to the session. Aside from limping a little towards the end, I actually felt alright, no stitch or anything! I fear I may be getting fitter.

My laziness of last week has had an impact today it seems. My legs have ached all day, not badly, and not as bad as when I first started, but enough to pull a funny face when walking up a flight of stairs, and enough to just know that I wouldn't have been able to beat last nights run, so I have taken a rest day, with the view of having a good run tomorrow. This leaves me with a bit of a dilemma:

Do I run every night and only manage half arsed results OR do I run every second day and be able to put in full effort? The logic in the latter part of my thinking is that when I still used to go to the gym, my instructor specifically told me not to do two days in a row as this will mean you can put in full effort every other day, rather than half effort every day. I wasn't going to argue with him, the guy was like a shaved bear, plus it meant I got to spend more time with my friend, the sofa.