I am an athlete!

I’m still here. I haven’t had a lot of spare time and have no desire to sit in front of a computer when I get home from work…

I have continued most of my three mornings a week of the C25K program. My running buddy injured herself in a gym class so we had to step back a few weeks.

We also found a small home gym that holds a ‘balance’ type class on a Friday morning – a bit of tai chi, yoga, pilates, relaxation. I’m finally doing some core/stretching work.

I ran a 5km (4.88km according to runkeeper) race on Sunday. 33 minutes, 6 seconds. My best time yet! 1.5 minutes faster than my Good Friday run. 5 minutes faster than my last race.

I have been a bit slack on my 12WBT journey this round and have actually gained approx 5% but after much deliberation I signed up for the next round. I spent last Sunday afternoon cooking up 14 meals to put in the freezer for all the nights I know I’m not going to be home (SES and Toastmasters mainly).

Last weekend I ran into the musical director of the Tamworth Musical Society’s production of Sound of Music. She convinced me to pull my french horn out of the cupboard where it has sat virtually untouched since late 2009. I am officially a musician again – of sorts. I’m playing in the orchestra for The Sound of Music. I have been to three rehearsals, there are two more, then the show opens on Friday May 10th!

As of today – I officially have a coach! I guess that makes me an athlete. This lady is a former world champion triathlete! She has much cheaper rates than I expected and is quite happy to take on amateur/beginner/non-athletes. Her goal is to make exercise fun and enjoyable for people, not find the next world champion.

Initially, she is going to help me train for the half-marathon I signed up for in October, and a sprint triathlon in November. I’ve been worried about stepping up my “training” for running because I’m almost at the point I need to start thinking about hydration and nutrition and have no idea where to start. She can help with this too. Yay.

My ultimate goal is to complete an olympic distance triathlon before I turn 40. I now have slightly less than 2 years because I “got older” a few weeks ago.

And, I won some swimming caps over at The Water Blogged Triathlete. Wearing a swim cap from Alaska is sure to make me think about whether or not “cold” really is cold!

I’m also finally over halfway through my virtual training journey from Sydney to Melbourne.

Things are looking up for the rest of the year. I’m so excited!

To top it off, I’m watching Pitch Perfect (in the background) for the umpteenth time. I love it. If ever it becomes an amateur musical I think I’ll just have to audition. One item on my bucket list is to actually be “on stage” for a musical instead of just in the orchestra pit. Except by then, I’ll be so old the only female part would be the female commentator!

It’s after midnight and I have an early start for a run in the morning so I’d better sign off. Sorry for the lack of pics.

Heather

Running Keeps the Flies Away

I decided today, that someone needs to invent a car that’s made of some kind of titanium-strength membrane to protect you in an accident. However, the membrane should be flexible and coded to the owner’s DNA so that the owner can get into the car in a hurry – without needing to open the door, but anything without that DNA needs to have the door open in order to get in. That way, I could hop in my car after a run without letting the 50 million flies on my back into the car with me. Any budding inventors out there?

Speaking of cars, I saw this on a car the other day. It made me smile.

Not that I would ever do that – for the record!

With the public holiday today, my running buddy and I had agreed to run at 6.30am instead of our usual 6am start – since we didn’t have to rush to get to work. Unfortunately, she wasn’t feeling well and sent me a message last night to say she couldn’t make it.

So I set my alarm for 6.30, intending to be in town ready for my run at 7am. And I was. I also decided that instead of following our C25K program (on Wednesday we did a 20 minute jog – no walking!) I would try and jog a full 5km.

I parked my car, after writing a note detailing where I planned to run and leaving it in my glovebox – just in case, I started my 5 minute warm up walk. The flies were everywhere. Buzzing in my ears and face, on my shoulders, and in my hair! Ewww. I can’t handle flies crawling on my skin. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle it. I focussed on getting my runkeeper app settings right since I usually don’t have any notifications on, I rely on my running buddy to tell me where we’re up to. I turned on notifications for every 5 minutes, and every 500m.

Usually our 5 minute warm up is part of the 5km circuit we do, and we finish somewhere between 40 and 45 minutes. Today I started the GPS tracking at the start of my run – after my warm up.

It was only when I reached the end of my 5km and started walking again that the flies came back. I must have been running too fast for them to keep up with me!

I managed to jog almost the entire 5km. I walked up a flight of stairs and about 5 steps after that. I also walked about 20 steps somewhere between 4km and 4.5km. I was very happy with my effort because it was just me out there today. The only app running on my phone was runkeeper so I wasn’t keeping time with music and I managed to keep a fairly steady pace. At each km mark I was close to being on track to do 6km in 40 minutes. (That was the easy maths option.) Since I was only planning to run 5km, I was confident most of the time that I would run a personal best. My previous best was 38 minutes something last August.

Here are my km splits…

for my first ever 5km in under 35 minutes! And it wasn’t even a race. Imagine if I had that extra adrenaline and a crowd around me pushing me. Actually, I hope that in a race situation I would maintain a similar time, running my own race rather than going out hard with faster runners and ending up with nothing left in the tank for the final 500m.

It took me 15 minutes to get through some ordinary (bad) stretches because I had no balance and my legs didn’t want to hold me up anymore. And the flies were back with a vengeance – especially since I was now extra hot and sticky from jogging in the muggy, overcast morning.

I managed to burn some serious calories in 50 minutes (including the 15 minutes of so-called stretching).

Usually I need a run and then a gym session to reach 500 calories.

I came home and updated my Sydney to Melbourne virtual journey ticker and noticed I’ve now reached 399.2km. I probably would have pushed for another kilometre if I’d known.

However, since I ended up sleeping away the afternoon, I might not have managed that extra kilometre.

It might be time to start learning about nutrition and hydration. I was certainly ready for the water I’d left in the car when I finished!

Paces

I don’t really understand my pace graphs. These images from Runkeeper show a blue line for my pace. There’s no scale so I’m not sure whether the different days’ graphs can be compared or not. Generally, I’ve thought the lower sections of blue squiggle are when I was running last Friday (in the top graph) and the higher bits are when I walked. Today though, when I jogged almost all of it, the line is much higher. I was jogging faster (km/h), so my pace (min/km) should have been lower – shouldn’t it? Obviously the phrase “pick up the pace” is not related to running pace or you’d end up going slower by having a higher pace number. Too confusing for my brain today.

Is pace important? Perhaps at a more advanced level but not at my level? What do you think?

My running buddy and I have agreed to focus on the number of minutes we can jog rather than how far we get in those minutes. We hope the increase in speed will come naturally once we get the stamina happening.

Speaking of running – I never imagined I would consider a 4km fun run, a “light” run. But I am going to sign up for the Mother’s Day Classic – now that I’ve found out they’re running one here in Tamworth. That will mean fun runs on three consecutive weekends for me. One 5km in Quirindi, then the 5km Newcastle Color Run, then this one.

I’ve cancelled my gym membership from the end of April. I am thinking about putting the money into some private coaching and/or pool passes. I haven’t been going much anyway, preferring the quiet solitude of jogging. Words I never thought I’d utter.

And the bigger news? I’ve signed up to the do run leg for a team in the Port Macquarie half ironman in October. This year. That’s a half marathon – 21.2km! Entries haven’t opened yet but I’ve spoken to the lady organising the teams running under the TriFreedom banner.

LBD

Finally, a photo of the little black dress I mentioned waaaaaay back in November in this post.

Mum was here yesterday so she took a photo of me in the dress – albeit before I did my hair and makeup!

Up and down

I have decided not to do the 5km fun run at Forster on 14th April. Instead, I have registered for a triathlon training camp. My friend who did the Pinkie Triathlon with me last October is going too. It’s on here in Tamworth that same weekend. It includes sessions on run skills, cycle skills, functional gym exercises for triathletes, swimming technique, open water swimming technique and transitions. Also a bonus session on “fitting it all in”.

I’m thinking of having the fancy pedals put back on my bike – to try and learn how to use my special shoes (with cleats?)…

Other than that, life is mosey-ing along nicely. Work is still busy, I’m still not getting the study done that I should be but I did submit an assessment task this week!

C25K is going well. We completed week 5 this week. We’re doing the actual C25K that I have, we’re doing my running partner’s and it’s slightly difference. We accidentally missed a walk segment this morning and still made it to the end. We usually cover about 3.5km in the half hour program then keep walking/jogging for alternate 2 minutes until we hit 5km. We usually do that in about 40 minutes all up, including our 5 minute warm up. I think I’m on track to be able to run the full 5km at the races in 5 and 6 weeks. That will be a huge milestone achieved.

Here are some of my pace graphs from runkeeper. The troughs in the blue line are the jogging sections, the peaks are the walking, or in some cases the “we stopped, chatted and stretched but I forgot to turn off runkeeper“. Ooops. It’s possible to see just how much more time we now spend jogging rather than walking – even over this past couple of weeks.

Week 1 – Day 2, 15th February (the long stretch of jogging was my 1km time trial for my fitness test for 12WBT)

Week 4 – Day 1, 11th March

Week 4 – Day 2, 13th March

Week 4 – Day 3, 15th March

Week 5 – Day 2, 20th March

Week 5 – Day 3, 22nd March (today)

It’s fairly obvious we follow the same path each morning too, isn’t it? It is starting to get very dark early in the morning though, and I actually wore a light jacket on Monday. Brrrr. Not sure how I’ll handle the early morning starts in winter. I have been getting up at 5am most mornings for the past few weeks so I’m hoping I’ll eventually be so tired that I start going to bed earlier too. Here it is 11.30pm though and I’m sitting at the computer.

I’m also considering changing gyms. My current one is open 24 hours which suited me when I first joined because I was going at 10 or 11 o’clock at night (the other gyms are well and truly closed at that time). However, I usually go at about 6.30/7.00am now and all the gyms are open then. There is one gym that has a pool and that’s the one I’m thinking of joining. It’s going to be easier to practise swimming if I have access to a pool…

It’s a big weekend for us this weekend with the hubby participating in two Toastmasters contests at Division level (won club, then area. Next stop District, then World Championship). An opportunity to dress up for the Charter Dinner celebrating the formation of a new Toastmasters Club in town – wearing my size 10 little black dress again – yay. All this followed by a 1st birthday party for lunch Sunday. Hubby’s birthday next week too…

And we just spent yet another “red flag weekend” away at Port Macquarie last weekend. We did a fair bit of (leisurely) walking along the coastal paths and beaches though and the sun was out so it was beautiful.

That is the reflected in the ups on this graph. I’d prefer to see some downs here. Next time. I’ve realised in the last couple of days that I’m not drinking much water anymore. I’m hoping that when I start drinking again I’ll see another improvement.

A banana quinoa porridge is on the menu again this week for 12WBT. Not sure if I’m game enough to try it again… remember this?

Identity crisis

Hello bloggy followers… It’s about time I posted again, just to remind you all that I’m not missing in action. Still alive and kicking, just super-busy. Exercise has been off and on, food intake pretty much the same and sleep almost non-existent it seems.

I did the first week of C25K again with a friend, managed to do two of the sessions while I was away in Perth for week 2, missed all of week three this past week due to an inability to readjust to the eastern time zone make myself go to bed before 2am at night. I did go to the gym twice last week though and I’m going to launch back into week 4 of C25K tomorrow.

I’ve also been busy researching wasting time on the internet, looking for fun runs to do around here. A few months ago I subscribed to Women’s Running magazine. In the calendar at the back of the March/April Issue, there was a listing for the Quirindi Canter. I have now registered for the 5km run on 28th April. I’m also doing the 5km Color Run in Newcastle on 5th May.

I was also considering the enticer distance tri at Port Stephens Triathlon but it’s too hard to fit swimming into my schedule at the moment so I might skip that.

I found a 5km fun run at Forster on 14th April which I was all ready to sign up for but then I saw a flyer on facebook for a Triathlon Camp here in Tamworth on that same weekend. So… I’ve sent off an expression of interest for that instead! Eeek. Time to put my money where my mouth is so-to-speak. Gotta start working towards my goal.

It looks like I’m heading more into the running events now instead of triathlon, but only because they seem to be more accessible (goes with the territory when you live several hours from the coast I guess). So I’m faced with an identity crisis: I seem to be leaning more towards running (it’s easier – did I really just type that?) than triathlons but I still want to finish an Olympic distance Triathlon before I turn 40. 2 years and 43 days to go.

I have the Days Left widget on my phone and I have one home screen dedicated to all the events I’m considering entering. Pink for runs, aqua for triathlons. Blue icons for “look into” status and green ticks for events I’ve registered for.

The overflow on the next home screen has the Forster Sprint Tri (750m/20km/5km) in 226 days and the Mud Run (7km) in 272 days.

I’ve already downloaded the 5km-10km follow-on app from C25K so I can keep increasing my distance after I reach 5km. I might even attempt the City to Surf (14km) in August and the Tamworth Ten (km) the following week.

Who’d have ever though I’d get excited about running? Certainly not me. And I can’t even run yet – I’m still plodding, or almost jogging sometimes.

Last night I attended a TriFreedom fundraising/celebration dinner. TriFreedom is a group of triathletes raising awareness and funds for the anti-human trafficking/slavery organisation, The A21 Campaign. Watching their slideshows and hearing their stories, almost had me ready to sign up for a half-ironman with them. Maybe in a few years. The most inspiration part of the night though, was knowing that we as “normal” people can do something to help. We can’t take on the whole human-trafficking issue but through organisations like A21, we CAN make a difference, to one person at a time. I recommend you visit their site and see just how big and widespread this injustice is. I had no idea.

I might not be out there running ironman races with them but I can still help spread the word. The A21 Campaign also works towards prevention and awareness, not just rescuing victims. Spread the word, be aware, and keep your sisters, nieces, cousins, friends and daughters safe. And the boys too. They are not immune.

On a more positive note, my sister and I have decided to donate our ponytails to Beautiful Lengths. We have an appointment for 6th April at the hair dresser and will bundle up our ponytails to send off to be made into wigs for people undergoing cancer treatments. I have five weeks to decide on a short haircut that doesn’t require a fringe (can’t stand hair on my face) and requires little to no work in the mornings! We aren’t doing it for fundraising but we are tying it in my sister’s sister-in-law Julia’s headshave on the same day and will be directing people to her fundraising site.

So many people have no choice but to lose their hair. We have a choice, and I’d rather see it used for good than swept up off the floor and binned.

Have a great week and I’ll try to include more photos next time to make my post more interesting.

Going up

Great start to the round. Not. I really only had the one day that I totally blew my nutrition. I am going to rely on all that research I’ve read that points to a lack of sleep causing weight gain. I’ve had so many nights recently with only 4-5 hours sleep…

However, check this out! This was this morning’s effort before I even got to work.

That was my C25K session (plus a walk back to the car because we didn’t turn around at half time) plus most of a cardio session at the gym. I ran out of time to finish it.

I forgot to turn the runkeeper app off before I drove off in my car! Oops. I sped up then (pace dropped off).

I have decided the two running programs was too much so I’m back onto the Intermediate gym machine programme officially through 12WBT and will continue C25K as well.

On Facebook tonight I saw this:The credit on facebook was to this website but I couldn’t find it there to link directly.

I am still devastated that I can’t go to finale in Melbourne (unless anyone has a charter plane to fly me back to Newcastle on the Sunday in time for Color Run 5km race) but I’m still going to continue my virtual trek and I added another 11.5km this morning (5.2km C25K session, 1km rower, 1.3km treadmill, 4km bike).

 

I plan to do my fitness test and measurements tomorrow morning then will have to ask hubby to take photos tomorrow night after work.

534km to Melbourne

I have reversed my training distance ticker. I am now making my way from Sydney to Melbourne.

As a result, I am no longer near the interstate border.

I don’t know the date for the Finale Workout and Party for this 12WBT round yet. As at last night, I had 541.6 km to go. That means  I need to cover 45.13333 km in each of the next 12 weeks. If I try to do all of that in five days, that’s just over 9km per day. Today I did 7.6km. Today was a cardio day though – the strength/toning days won’t clock up many km. I might have to re-evaluate the plan. Or, I could use weekends (except the next two that will be spent jetsetting across the country) to catch up any deficits for the week.

Despite waking up at 5.52am (needing to be in town at 6am and it’s a 6-8 minute drive!) I managed to meet my new FB friend for the C25K session. We did approx 4.6km based on a whereis map. I forgot to turn on my runkeeper app.

I also got to the gym in time to meet my gym buddy at 7am. I was a little concerned that I wouldn’t be able to handle the learn to run workout after having done the c25k already before I even got to the gym. I skipped the 10min warmup – I figured 45 minutes of walk/jog was warmup enough. Next was 20min on the treadmill. I struggled through that, almost quitting several times in the last 5 minutes but I made it to the end and actually had sweat running into my eyes and stinging. I’m not sure I’ve ever pushed myself that hard.

Hopped off the treadmill to write down the number of kilometres I did (3km on the dot by the end of cool down) and noticed I was supposed to do 10 lots of 30 seconds jog followed by 90 seconds walking. I had done 30 seconds walk followed by 90 seconds jog! No wonder I nearly quit. I am quite relieved that my fitness hasn’t dropped off quite as far as I expected. So I jogged for a total of 9 minutes out of the 20 instead of only 4 minutes.

Since I was running late this morning I didn’t have time to put on my heart rate monitor for the C25K. I did put it on for the gym though and managed to burn 335cal. That’s pretty good for me. Especially first day back in a few months. Did my stretches, had my shower, got to work on time.

Had to climb these stairs at work (no lift option) three times in the first 20 minutes. Uggh.

Admittedly, the first time was just to take this photo. I didn’t really need the warning though. LOL.

Skip to lunch time. Made a delicious wrap. Headed off to do banking etc. I was dreading the afternoon based on the preceding morning. I was rather controlled and bought one chocolate with less than 200 calories. But I “hoovered it” as I’ve heard people say. Still had time left on my lunch break, didn’t feel like going straight back to work so called in at a servo to pick up another “small chocolate” to get me through the afternoon. Oops. Brain fade…

I ended up buying some snack sized ones that were on sale, telling myself I’d eat one a day. I’m sure you can guess where I’m heading with this tale. All four of them were gone within half an hour. 976 calories of chocolate consumed within 45 minutes.

So, not only did I have the harder-than-usual afternoon I expected, I had to endure it while feeling bloated and sick. Fortunately, it wasn’t a mental/guilty sick, it was an actual physical feeling of unwellness. I deeply regret my actions. Came home and cooked a (mostly) yummy Spanish-inspired 12WBT meal of chickpeas, spinach, cherry tomatoes (that’s the un-yummy), onion, feta and grilled fish.

It was nice but I only ate half a serve. I wasn’t hungry. Not surprising given that I’d eaten almost a whole day’s worth of food in that 45 minute spell earlier in the day.

Well, tomorrow’s a new day and hopefully I’ve learned my lesson and next time I’m tempted to overindulge my sweet tooth, I’ll remember how I felt today.

Melbourne, here I come!

This is my inspiration board for this round: