Well I am back now and my first new post is a quick update as to where i am now.

I have spent the last week running every day as part of a challenge call the 100 days of Christmas where you run every day from Sept 15 – Christmas eve (seems very weird using the C word this long before Dec 25th).

I have spent the last month-ish learning how to swim ready for when i start training for my Quadrathlon next July.

I will be doing an update of my goals, team and gear this week as they have changed over the last year.  Most of my goals will all be in moving towards doing much longer endurance and adventure based events.

I have also been moving towards a more primal way of eating (Paleo diet), all of which i will be posting about in the future.

I decided to do a 1 mile run again last night because the run I have planned fell through, I was not sure what to expect, because although I have done a fair amount of running, I have not done any speed training.

The first 1/4 of a mile felt very strong and very fast, and as i grew more tired I slowed down a little.  I managed to do the run in 6:40 which not only smashes the sub 7:00 min mile, but also puts me very close to the sub 6:30 min mile.

The event details are:

Brentwood Half-Marathon
24/10/2010
10:00am
Weald Country Park
Weald Road
Brentwood

Please feel free to come along and cheer me on, or run with me (come on Brighty).

Getting stitch during a run sucks!

Up until  a few weeks ago I never got stitch when running, I don’t really get blisters either (yes I know that’s pretty lucky!).  However the last few weeks I am getting stitch to some degree on most of my runs and its sucks.

I thought stitch was related to running too soon after eating, but I have run on an empty stomach and still get stitch, grrrrr!  It turns out that I was wrong, I just saw this in a running magazine.

“Unsteady, shallow breathing can lead to stiches  – spasms in the diaphram” - says physiotherapist Scott Michell

This makes sense as the stitches are less serve more recently (as I get fitter).  There are 3 tips:

1. Breath Deep - When the stitch starts to kick in, take a deep breath, then hold your breath for 3 seconds before breathing out slowly.
2. Think about footfall - Your stitch can be made worse when organs such as the liver and stomach on the right hand side of the body bang against your diaphragm.  You can ease this by breathing out as your left foot strikes the ground.
3. Rethink what and when you eat - A full stomach bounces around more when running so keep pre-run food light and give yourself at least 1 hour to digest.

I have heard the second one before and it really does help, hopefully the others will keep stitch at bay if it kicks in.

Last week I did a few runs, finishing the week with a nice 8 mile run with my brother in law.  I also manged to get on the bike a few times at the gym racking up some miles (which is a start).

However I didn’t do enough running and no where near enough biking.  So although I am moving in the right direction by doing weekly exercise I am not getting in enough of it.  This is mostly down to having quite a bit on at work, and this weeks going to be much worse I think.

One solution I am going to try after my 100 mile bike ride is to run to and from work, about a 16 mile round trip, that should be a very interesting month. I cant even bike to work this week as I am out of the office traveling alot this week. Arg!

I am also noticing that although I am exercising more than I was, my nutrition is off base, I feel quite week and tired a lot of the time.  I know this means I am not getting the right nutrients in my diet, but again I am not finding the time to address (despite the fact that we all have the same 24 hours).

Tasks for this week:

1. Addresses what I eat and drink from this week moving forward.
2. Schedule in exercise and stick to it
   

I have not done any specific speed training, but I have done some running and all at a better pace than I used to run at. I thought it was about time I did another 1 mile run and see where I am now.

The only problem is I am shattered, its been a long day, I didn’t get much sleep last night and the sofa is calling me. Only time will tell who will win.. the sofa… or the road.

Update

I am please to say that the road won.

Rather than do my 1 mile run like I did last time, which was to run fast out of the gates and have to slow right down after 1/4 of a mile, I did the opposite.

I started slowish and built up pace and tried to maintain that pace as best I could with a sprint at the end.

I finished it in 7:01 which is faster than my first try, by a whole 4 seconds, but its a start. Another plus was it only took me 5 minutes to recover after this run, unlike last time!

Another thing which freaked me out a little was that the last short sprint was done at a 5:35 min mile. I can’t yet imagine doing a 5:00 min mile!

C- must try harder

Flex that brain

I have always believed in what I suppose a lot of people refer to as positive thinking.  I am not talking about when people sit in there garden with their eyes closed chanting “there are no weeds, there are no weeds”.

I am talking about the pepole who believe they can do something and take the action required to get it done.

Whether you think you can
or think you can’t
you are right

One of the problems I have always had with running, is speed, when I was training for my marathons I always knew I could run the distances when I set out.  The problem was could I run then in the time I needed to?

I always assumed that it was a physical thing stopping me, after all I believed in positive thinking and the reason I didn’t do it in the right time was because I was in some form of pain or discomfort and had to slow down.  I now know I was feeding myself a lie.

I know that I can do a 6 mile run at a pace of about 9.15 min mile (at best), most of the time its quite a bit slower.  Sometimes I can do 2-4 mile runs at a 9 min mile pace, but that’s always been my limit.  Last week when I set out for long weekend run, I started thinking about what my next blog post would be about.  I started to think about doing a post on positive thinking and mental toughness when pushing yourself physically.  While deep in thought I noticed myself slowing down due to being slightly out of breath and I was starting to get stitch.

How on earth can I do a post on mental toughness and pushing yourself when I am not doing it myself?  So I told myself, “you can do this” (man that sounds cheesy) and rather than slow down I picked the pace up, focused on my breathing, stood tall and pushed my shoulders back.  I ready to go.  By the end of the run I had a grin ear to ear, I didn’t know what my time was, but I knew I had pushed myself and done well.  I had completed the run at a personal best time of 8.45 min mile (30 seconds per mile faster than I had run 6 miles in before). Oh Yeah!!

The next day, my legs had that nice post exercise ache to them, no pain just a nice little ache, I was happy.

Yesterday I set out for a 4 mile mid week run, but the start of the run was not good.  I felt heavy and sluggish  I knew my time for this run was going to be poor, I could just feel it in my bones.  After about 2 miles of running at a slow, crappy pace I started to get pissed off.  I was thinking “had my run last week been a fluke?“, “can I really push through this?“  “Well one way to find out” I thought, so I started to pick up the pace, every time I felt myself slow down, I kicked it up again.  It was a bit of a weird yo-yo type of a run, but at the end I had pulled back the time from 10+ min mile pace to end on an average of a 8.48 min mile pace.

I am going to play with this a little more, but I am sold on the fact that your thoughts will effect your performance (in all aspects of your life).

Due to work commitments I have not spent as much time as I hoped on my challenges, that probably the problem there, hope wont get me far.  I will have to get a proper plan together this weekend.

I have still been running a few times a week and did a 6 mile run in a personal best time (more on that in the next post).

I have signed up for a 100 mile bike ride which is in about 5 weeks and I still don’t have a bike.  Part of the problem is I cant afford to spend a lot of money on a bike, but on the flip side you don’t want to spend the little money you do have on junk!  I have a few options, but I will have to make a decision by Sunday.  Despite not having a bike I did get some training in today on the exercise bikes at the gym today.

The area I have been lacking the most is the swimming and this is the area I am suffering in the most.  I think the plan will be to get the running and 100 mile bike ride completed and start the swimming in 5 weeks.

I have been doing the push ups working towards by first mini goal of 100 push-ups, however I have started to get niggles in my right shoulder.  Last year I suffered from a problem with my rotary cuff, so I don’t want to push myself to the point of damage, but I don’t want to hold back.  I just have to push it bit by bit and see how i get on.

I am finding the biking goals the hardest to come up with, I have a goal to bike from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, which is quite a big goal (I am hoping to do it in 9-10 days).  However finding smaller biking goals to focus on in the meantime is harder than I thought it would be.

Part of the problem is because I can ride a bike I seem to think that most of the biking events will be easy.  I know this is daft, but I have no idea what will test me, without being stupid.

As if by fate I was thinking about this when I was taking a walk to the local library to rent a dvd, and they had a fyler for a local biking event which is 100 miles and in 2 months time.  How serendipitous is that? (I love that word).

Following the pattern of my other goals, my starting point should be to go out on a bike ride and see how far I get.  However there is a problem there, I need to get a racing bike first, I have a clapped out mountain bike, but thats not going to cut it!

So in a the next few weeks I need to find some time to find a good local bike shop and buy a bike.  I am really looking forward to this race, I havent been on long bike rides since I was a kid and I loved them then!

As I have already mentioned on this blog I am a very very poor swimmer (I will soon be posting a video to show you just how bad).  The most I ever swam in one go, was about 20m, as a child.

Lots of my new goals and challenges will involve swimming, so I will be taking swimming lessons over the coming months.  I took some total immersion swimming lessons at the start of the year because I was hoping to do a quadrathlon this year.  I am now doing it next year instead so the swimming stopped for a few months.

Open water – a whole new kettle of fish

Most of the goals and challenges I am doing are in open water swimming which introduces a whole host of new fears, which I will address once I have mastered them, I am not there just yet. Also just to be clear this blog post is about addressing fears when learning to swim and does not address having a phobia of water.

2 main fears

For most people I believe that if they can stand in the water with their feet on the ground and the water is below their shoulders then they are quite happy, and have little or no fear , even people who cant swim tend to be happy enough at this point.  The two main fears are when people can no longer touch the ground or grab the side of the pool, or when their face is under the water.

As this is part one, I will deal with the first fear you will encounter and that’s putting your face in the water when swimming.  Fear might seem like a strong word but if when your swimming you cant keep your face under the water, coming up for air from time to time of course , then there must be an element of fear somewhere?

Back to fear #1

When I took the first few lessons, the first task was to get me swimming with my head down and face in the water, this didn’t go too well.  I was snorting water, or breathing out of my nose so fast I managed to stay under the water for just a few seconds.

This was partly down to to my natural survial instinct kicking in and part fear of having my face in the water.  I needed to take control and be calm and relaxed, which is easier said than done.

If your not comfortable with having your face in the water, then you will keep it out of the water when swimming and this will knock out your balance in the water.  This has a knock on effect of making it harder to swim, and harder to stay afloat, which leads to even more problems.

Overcoming the fear

However you don’t want to spend hours and hours in the pool just trying to get comfortable with having your face in the water.  So whats the solution?

Equipment

• 1 x large bowl of water
• 1 x small mirror
• 1 x goggles
• 1 x towel

Steps

• Put the bowl of water on the table
• Put on your goggles
• Place the mirror at the bottom of the bowl of water
• Take a deep breath
• Put your face in the water (make sure you can see your face in the water, mainly nose and mouth)
• Breath out very slowly through your nose

The aim of this exercise is to make you comfortable breathing out under water, and although the thought (and sight) of you practising in your kitchen may seem ridiculous, it really does work!  I went from breathing out like a volcano and needing air within a very short amount of time to being able to calmly keep my face under water for quite a long time with tiny bubbles trickling out of my nose (nice images huh).  I manged to make big improvements with just 2 x 10 minute sessions, both carried out the two evening before my second swimming class.  My swimming coach even commented on how much more relaxed I was in the pool as a result.

Pointers

• make the bubbles as small as possible
• make them trickle out of your nose, not shot out
• try and increase the time you can spend breathing out of your nose under water
• relax as much as possible (i noticed that my shoulders were very tense when I started this exercise)