Jan 12 2014

49 Days to Go – Crunch Time!

Here’s what’s happened since my last post, last year!

Runkeeper Away

I was really worried that my Runkeeper tracking app wouldn’t work properly overseas and at first, it didn’t. So I didn’t track all my runs whilst in Europe over Christmas. But after a couple of outings, I worked out that it does work if you manually set the country you are in. The GPS can’t seem to work that out for itself which is odd since I thought that was the point of the GPS.

Training on Holiday

It’s not easy to keep to a training schedule when planes and trains are involved and you have travelled to an area of the world with only six hours decent light a day. In the end though, I only missed three runs and shortened one long run down to 10 km.

I got horribly lost on a long run in The Hague at night. I hadn’t sorted out the GPS problem properly at that stage either so that run turned out to take much longer than it was supposed to, mainly because I had to keep ducking into kebab shops to ask for directions.

Getting Caught Short in Berkel

I had only run a kilometre before I began to feel a bit “uncomfortable”. Expecting this feeling to subside, I kept running. After another kilometre, I began scanning the surroundings for useful facilities. It wasn’t much longer before I started to include large trees and hedges in my search, anything really, that would afford me a bit of cover. Unfortunately, the part of The Netherlands I was in, was devoid of any of these.

In the end, I was forced in desperation to cut my run short and head home. I made it with seconds to spare.

Breaking Personal Records

This is the run I did today! I’ve never run this far before in my life. And it didn’t kill me!

Dec 2 2013

89 Days to Go

On Saturday I completed my first ever 10km run under 60 minutes!

It was a beautiful day in Tokyo and a HUGE thank you needs to go out to my running partners Kim, Elaine and Sangeeta. Also, I must thank the support team of Alex and Fred who came along to cheer us on.

My attempt at broadcasting the race live was a total failure due to the fact that I didn’t read the instructions. I was supposed to enable the broadcast via the app on my phone which I never did so the link I put on my previous post, got people nowhere. Oh well, that’s life! I will try it again on Sunday for my long run with Kim and hopefully this time it will work. I intend to read the instructions this time. The link should automatically appear on my Facebook page. However, unless you have a RunKeeper account (and if you are a runner and don’t – seriously, what are you waiting for) it won’t update in real time. Instead you will have to refresh the page to see my progress. At least that is what it says in this video…

My next race will be the half marathon in March. Only 89 days to go! At least I know I can get halfway there…almost that is!

Me, Sangeeta, Kim and Elaine at Tokyo Run for the Cure – and we did!

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Merilyn Winslade

Nov 29 2013

93 Days to Go

Tomorrow I’m going to do my first race for 18 months. It is the Run For the Cure in Tokyo and it is 10 km.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Eryn Vorn

Now, here is the thing. I’ve upgraded my RunKeeper to the elite for a bargain basic price of $20 for a year. One of the perks of this upgrade is that people can follow my race live! I don’t actually know what this means you can see so I kind of want someone to log on and view it while I’m running and then tell me what they could see.

So here are the details.

Race Date: Saturday 30th November
Race Time: 10:40 am Japan Standard Time (Click here to find out what time that is for you!)
Race Duration: Approximately 1 hour

Watch Race Live

My goal is to run the race under 1 hour. Yesterday I did 8km in 45 minutes so I’m hoping that I can do it! Wish me luck! 🙂

Nov 24 2013

97 Days to Go

What a week!

YIS Cross Country

Last year I ran with some students in the school’s cross country event and it nearly killed me. This year, after all the training I have done, I was expecting a much easier run. I was wrong.

I have been training exclusively along the waterfront which is of course flat. The cross country course has small but significant hills and the first one is right at the beginning. It killed me.

Zombies, Run!

This is my new favourite app for running! It really distracts you from the boredom of running a bit and it syncs beautifully with my RunKeeper so I still get all my running stats!

So far, none of the zombies have caught me!

Nov 13 2013

108 Days to Go

As you know, I’ve been having some trouble with my calves becoming very tight during my runs. After doing some research, I discovered that stretching regularly is key to solving this problem. As such, I decided tonight, to start doing yoga every day to help with that.

I’ve never done yoga before.

I google searched (the font of all knowledge) “yoga for runners”.

I found a bunch of yoga videos for free on YouTube.

I got 2 minutes into my first choice before I stopped. It only had static pictures. I had no idea how to get from one pose to another.

I got 5 minutes into my second choice before I stopped.

Yoga, as it turns out, is not just stretching but also balance. It turns out that attempting your first session of yoga after 3 (albeit small) glasses of red wine and two (again small) bottles of sake, is not easy. In fact, it is down right dangerous! Instead, I’m off to do a much easier task like planning a lesson on the hybridisation of carbon. At least for that I can sit down!

PS Why do all commentators on yoga videos sound like they’re stoned? Surely that wouldn’t help with your balance either!

Nov 10 2013

111 Days to Go

Today is Sunday and Sunday equals distance! Today I ran 13 kms. This is the longest I’ve run so far this year. You can check out my stats below or click on the picture to go to my RunKeeper page.

Now that the distance is increasing, my tight calves are becoming more of a hindrance, so I started doing some research into the problem. It turns out that the problem could probably be solved by wearing good shoes and stretching a lot. Not just before and after the run, but several times during the day. I came across a lot of very dodgy looking videos on how to do this. Here is a small selection.

I don’t know why, but all the videos seem to be made with the same poor quality camera work and be presented by Australians who are clearly winging it script-wise. Despite this, for the last few days I’ve been stretching my calves at every opportunity in preparation for today’s run.

As for the shoes, I bought a new pair yesterday. Unfortunately, although I bought the shoes in a sports store and I had successfully communicated to the salesman who didn’t speak English, that I wanted running shoes, he never put me on one of those machines that look at how your foot is when running. To his credit, he did manage to find a pair to fit my gigantic western feet and give me a ¥4000 (~AUD $40) discount.

So when I ran today, my calves were much improved but my feet are now the problem. Both my feet went to sleep and my right foot felt like there was a marble pushing on the ball of my foot. When I finished the run, I removed my shoe and checked, but there was no such marble inside.

And finally, my underarm chafe is just getting worse! Today I got new iPhone band chafe on one arm and t-shirt rubbing chafe on the other. It won’t be long before I will need to start bandaging my arms before running.

On the upside though, apart from discomfort in my feet and arms, I didn’t feel tired really at all during the run. I never got out of breath as I kept running at a comfortable pace and although the distance is a long way short of the 21 kms I will eventually need to do, I am beginning to feel quietly confident that I may be getting a train home on race day and not an ambulance.

Nov 5 2013

116 Days to Go

New Land Speed Record Set in Yokohama

A new land speed record has been set today at 6:30am JST in the sleepy, seaside village of Yokohama in Japan. The 30 minute/5 km barrier has finally been smashed by Merilyn Winslade driving the new model MLW-2013. Over the 5.26 km course, an average pace of 5 minutes and 33 seconds per kilometer was achieved. A blistering pace of 5 minutes and 21 seconds for the fourth kilometer was recorded however this was on a slight downhill slope which may render the record invalid. The total time for the course was 29 minutes and 13 seconds. No previous models of the MLW have been able to achieve these lightening-like speeds with the previous best attempt being more than 32 minutes for 5 km.

The owner and designer of the new model MLW claims that a 7kg lighter frame combined with a stronger body and more flexible joints, all key features in the new design, were instrumental in today’s record breaking achievement. A last minute polishing of the exterior from the nose down during yesterday’s public holiday, also helped to improve the aerodynamic capabilities of the vehicle and lead to a decrease in air resistance with a new smooth skin exterior.

The next test for the new MLW is in a couple of weeks when its ability to sustain these speeds over a 10 km track will be attempted. This race will be broadcast live via RunKeeper.com and details of the schedule will be published on this site in the lead up to the November 30th attempt.

View from the “ArmBand Cam” on the MLW during today’s record breaking attempt.

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Éole Wind

Oct 31 2013

121 Days to Go

I have a cold and a pair of tight calves but I didn’t let that stop me from going for my Thursday run with the fabulous KimSpiration (one of my running partners). My SmartCoach had me down for 8km speed work run. This was hard. The run went as follows:

1.5 km warm-up – easy pace
1.5 km fast – this means fast enough for it to be uncomfortable to talk but not a sprint
750 m recovery – easy pace
1.5 km fast – to be honest, this wasn’t all that fast because I was still buggered from the first fast interval
750 m recovery – (very) easy pace
2 km cool-down – managed to get back into a comfortable rhythm and ended the run feeling pretty good

You can check out the route and my times etc on my RunKeeper page.

All this running has started to take its toll on my body. I’ve been carrying my phone with me so that I can track my runs and to do that I wear an armband. I noticed after my long run last week, that the armband had given me a nasty case of underarm chafe. It doesn’t look like much, but let me tell you that this stings like a bitch when you have a shower after the run!

Several years ago, I was running in the Perth City to Surf with my sister Terri and we had just completed about half of the race, when I had to stop at the first-aid post to pick up a bandaid for such a serious case of underarm chafe, that it had drawn blood. It turns out that there is a surprisingly large amount of paperwork involved in picking up a bandaid during the City to Surf, so our stop at the first-aid station seriously affected our race times. Terri wasn’t happy as I recall.

Anyway, the weather has turned cooler so I’ve been running with a jumper on since the weekend and the armband over top of that. This has solved the problem of the chaffing. Tonight, however, it was a bit warmer so I decided to run in just a t-shirt. I wore the armband on the other arm to avoid aggravating Sunday’s chafe but unfortunately I’ve chafed up that arm too now.

I’ve run out of arms to wear my armband on! God knows where I’m going to put it for my long run on Sunday.

My first week of working and training is nearly over and so far, so good. I will do a short 3 km tomorrow before school as I’m going to an important meeting after school off campus. Then a long run on Sunday before going to school for the Food Fair. I’ll be able to justify eating anything I want. I can’t wait!

Oct 29 2013

123 Days to Go

I think I may have overdone it today. I did the fourth day of The Shred this morning before school and then ran an easy pace 5 km run after school. My calves were tight though throughout the entire run and I never felt comfortable.

Another pair of tight calves.

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Neil Howard

I’ve decided to make tomorrow a rest day. Instead of getting up at 6 am and doing a workout, I’m going to get up at 6 am and catch up on my Facebook stalking.

Oct 28 2013

124 Days to Go

First day back at work AND on the new training program. Today was cross training so I just did the third day of the Thirty Day Shred. My legs still haven’t fully recovered from the lunges I did on the first day of The Shred. The challenge will be to keep up the amount of training I’m doing and turn up to work each day. The lunges could also prove problematic as my classroom is on the third floor and there is no elevator.

The bright light at the top of these stairs is a kind of metaphor for the blinding agony I suspect I will be in as I reach my third floor classroom tomorrow morning. Especially since I plan to repeat The Shred before leaving for school.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Till Krech