Tag Archives: running

Jul 14 2016

The Chaser

Some slightly less terrifying chasers.

There are few things as terrifying as feeling the hot breath of an unknown creature on the back of your calf as you are running at dusk in rural Australia.

As it was, my heart was already pumping pretty hard because I was running a fast interval, but it went up an extra notch due to the sheer terror I was feeling.  With great trepidation, I slowly turned my head to look behind me to find out just what was pursuing me.  Hot on my heels was an enormous sheep, barrelling its way down the hill right behind me.

I calmed down a little bit, but sheep still have an impressive set of gnashers so I kept running as hard as I could.  My training paid off because I was able to outrun the sheep which eventually gave up the pursuit and went back to nibbling grass on the side of the road.  Phew!

In unrelated news, I’m really enjoying working with my personal trainer Renee at Anytime Fitness in Falcon.  She is helping me put together a strength a program that I can carry on with at my local gym back in Japan.  She is also a long distance runner so she knows what needs to be done.  So far we have been working on 30 minute sessions that are a mixture of super sets and intensity workouts to target different muscle groups.  She has given me sets of exercises using just basic gear because the Naka Ward gym doesn’t have a lot of fancy machines but is well stocked on general lifting gear.  By the time I go back to Japan, I should be set!

Apr 25 2016

Getting Faster Despite Stitches and Insects

Two weeks ago, I went out to brunch, ate enough food to choke a small horse and then came home and ran my fastest 5 km ever!  This was despite having a murderous stitch for half of the run.  Yesterday, I had a better preparation before my run and despite inhaling a swarm of midgies with 2 km to go, I managed to run my fastest average pace yet again!

Imagine how fast I would be without eating a community of insects during the run!

Imagine how fast I would be without eating a community of insects during the run!

Marathon Preparation Update

I have signed up for a half marathon at the end of August which takes place up around Mt Fuji.  I’ve selected a 16 week training plan from the RunKeeper that will commence in early May.  Once I’ve completed this race, I will start a training plan for the full marathon in preparation for 2017!

The half marathon I’ve signed up for is going to be hot and hilly so I’m just aiming to finish and not really worried about the time.  Luckily I will be able to practice some hills around mum’s place when I’m home in July!

 

Apr 9 2016

42 Years 42 Kilometers

I am worried I’m getting old.

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Proof that I’m aging!

Last week I went to the doctors to have my ears syringed, my minimum font size is now up to 10 point and I’ve started to enjoy gardening.  All the signs are there.

So I’ve decided to give myself a challenge that an old person would be mad to attempt to prove that I’m not quite over the hill yet.  I’m going to run the Tokyo marathon in 2017.

Now, this is the plan but there is no guarantee that I will be able to get in as entry is on a lottery.  If I don’t get in, I’ll have to run something else, but I’m going to attempt a marathon some how.

This is going to require a lot of preparation.  For the last couple of years, I’ve been slowly trying to make changes to my lifestyle in order to live longer.  I’ve been pescatarian now for two years and I’ve cut down on dairy except milk in my tea and cheese because a life without cheese is no life at all.

Then in September, I decided to get really serious and stopped drinking.  My goal at the time was to make it until Christmas but I managed to keep on going right through the holiday and into January.  After five months of not drinking, I felt absolutely miserable.  I decided this was not sustainable and decided to tweak my plan a bit.  I now pick one drinking occasion a month.  January was a trip to the robot restaurant in Tokyo, February was a ski weekend in Hakuba and March was the St Patrick’s Day weekend.  This month I have a date to share a bottle of Cloudy Bay with the fabulous Mrs Rossing.

Also in September I decided to start the 5/2 fasting plan.  My friend Kim has been doing this for a couple of years now and when I was visiting with him last summer, I thought he was insane.  Then I saw the Horizon program What’s the Right Diet for You which discussed this plan and I decided to give it a go.  So I now only eat 500 calories on Monday and Tuesday and just try to eat sensibly every other day.  On the sensible days, I don’t deny myself anything but I try to not overeat.  It is so much simpler than counting calories.

Since this time last year, I have lost almost 12 kg.  I’ve just got four more kilos to lose to make my goal marathon weight!

Now I’m concentrating on starting my training plan.  The 2017 Tokyo marathon will happen in March so I have plenty of time to prepare.  I’ve had a foot injury for almost a year that just isn’t going away and a crunchy knee that I decided to see a physio about.  I made an appointment for the first week of the Spring break and I left Tokyo Physio armed with a collection of exercises to do and a tonne of bruises from the sports massage.  It was agony but the physio assured me it was necessary.  I had a session again last week and the massage hurt a lot less this time.  Apparently that’s progress!

Work starts again on Monday and my plan is to run 3 times a week and go to the gym twice a week for the rest of the semester (ten weeks) to try and get back into a regular training pattern.  After that, I’ll reassess and look at working on increasing speed and distance.

So that’s the plan in a nutshell.  Now I need advice especially from anyone who has run a marathon before.  Recommendations for training plans and any other tips and pointers would be appreciated.  I’m going to keep blogging about my progress to try and keep motivated and for accountability and I’m tracking all my training on my RunKeeper too.

My next step is the Paracup 10km race tomorrow.  I want to finish in under an hour and be able to walk on my sore foot later on that afternoon.  If I can run 10 km successfully tomorrow, surely 42 km won’t be a problem in 12 months time!

Jul 9 2015

The Importance of Planning

Day eight – Still in Seasalter

Woops!

Whoops!

Note to self – when in a foreign country, look up a map before going on a forty minute run!

Today I headed out thinking for my run that I’ll just keep the sea to the right for twenty minutes and then keep it to my left for the next twenty minutes.  So I started off running along the sea wall.  I don’t like looking at my phone all the time so I decided to judge the time by counting the number of songs that had played.  I estimated that each song was roughly three minutes long so I decided to run for seven songs along the wall.  It was a bit slow going along the wall and so I thought I should go a bit longer than half way and when it came time to turn back, run along the road a bit faster.

After seven songs, I came a long a gravel track heading back to the road so I took it.  It didn’t lead back to the road.  I went up a hill, down a hill, along a bit, around a corner and two kilometres later, finally hit the road and the way back to Seasalter.  I had only run along the road for a few minutes when my phone told me my forty minutes was up.  I thought about keeping on going but I was really tired.  I had walked into Whitstable and back earlier in the day.

I checked the route on my phone and I was about five kilometres away from my starting point!  I began walking along the narrow road and I decided to hitch a ride back.  I stuck my thumb out but car after car passed me by.  I’ve hitchhiked in New Zealand, the US and even Botswana before and I never had trouble getting a lift in those places.  Did I look particularly threatening in my running gear?  Lots of bikes passed me by too but they were the flimsy racing type and there was no way I was scoring a dink on those!

In the end I had to resort to putting on a limp to get a lift and finally a nice lady stopped to pick me up.  She drove me back to Smuggler’s Cove.  As I alighted from her car, some of the cyclists that had overtaken me earlier went passed.  They yelled out at me that I had cheated.  I agreed with them!

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At least I had time to snap a few selfies!

Image Credits

Photos taken by me and shared on Flickr.