Magic carpet – Page 10

January 26, 2010January 26, 2010

Just a second

I was just in the process of making a quick round of cheese on toast to eat at my desk when I realised that I was supposed to be running today. I only had a 40 minutes window of opportunity if I wanted to have time to shower before I needed to be out the door, so the completed cheese on toast went in the fridge and I went on the running machine.

I didn’t even have time to put Kiss FM on to accompany me so I had to put up with the sound of my feet as I did some fast intervals… hardly intervals though, as I was only going from 7mph to 8mph to 9mph to 8mph and then back round again.

As I reached the 5-mile mark I was surprised to see the time… 38 minutes, 43 seconds. One second faster than Friday last week. I really do hate racing myself, as I DO like to win… which means that the task can only get harder from here on in!

BTW, the cold cheese on toast was hard to swallow while I was running around the house trying to shower & out earlier, but I’ve just eaten the other half of it now and it was quite tasty.

January 22, 2010

Bravado

Bravado got the better of me yesterday and I foolishly volunteered to try to run 5km in sub-20.30.

As I started running on the machine at lunchtime, I finally worked out the speed I would need to do to achieve this: 9.4mph for 3.125 miles. Eeeek!

I thought I had better warm up thoroughly, so completed one mile before increasing the speed. After one more mile I can’t say that I felt particularly like doing 2.125 more at that speed, so I backed off.

So, Andy, the answer is no. Unfortunately I forgot to check what the time was when I did complete the 5km, so I’ll have to try again next week.

However, as I reached 5 miles, I noticed that the time was 38.44, which is actually faster than earlier in the week. This 7.74mph average speed would give me a 5km split time of just over 24 minutes. This is faster than I thought, bearing in mind it included my first warm-up mile.

January 20, 2010

VAT fuelled intervals

It took me longer this morning than usual to calculate my quarterly VAT return, in part because my accounting software doesn’t easily cater for the differential rates of the Flat Rate scheme, but mostly because the department that sold me on the idea of Flat Rate told me to do it incorrectly (using the net rather than the gross sales figure)… which meant that I had to go back today and calculate additional payments from past quarters. And then work out how to record these in my accounting software! Oh how I truly miss Maurice ‘Tigger’ Dawes!

To add injury to insult, the culpable department still think that they are correct, which meant that I was forced to call the ‘automated queuing’ helpline and endure 15 minutes of a message repeatedly saying that it may be helpful to look on our website while your waiting. I persevered and finally got a real person who confirmed that both my accountant and my colleague in RiVO were correct. Strangely, she didn’t seem to care that one of her colleagues was advocating an incorrect treatment of the figures. I suppose that that a little misinformation in the system could make life more interesting life for some people?

Anyway, fresh from this frustrating and monumental waste of time, I climbed aboard the magic carpet and ran my little legs off.

The downside of having run five miles in each of my sessions last week is that to do three and a half seems half-hearted. So I was forced to do another five and I did it as intervals: slightly faster, elongated ones.

I warmed up at 6mph then alternated largely between 7.5 mph and 9mph , with short segments of 6mph or 7mph. A couple of the the 9mph segments were 800m long which helped to increase the average speed from last week. So five miles in 39 minutes 7 seconds, an average of 7.67mph. And one very sweaty me!

January 17, 2010

Sneaky Friday

At the back end of Friday and before Kim got back from work, I managed to sneak in a quick run.

It was my intention to run three miles. This started out badly, as the two Hot Cross Buns I had wolfed down mid afternoon refused to budge and I hence ran the first mile with the stitch… and gasping for breath. I stopped for a moment for a sip of water and to turn the fan on and I felt much better from then on.

Inevitably, when I reached three miles, I decided to carry on to 30 minutes… and then on to 4 miles… and then, by the time I had slowed down to recover for 400m, I thought I may as well run on to 40 minutes so I increased the speed again… and then I was almost at 5 miles so I thought I may as well carry on to there!

I reached 5 miles at 41.55 which is an average of 7.14mph and even with a cool-down lap, the final 5.25 miles averaged 7.08mph.

January 12, 2010

In-lunch-terval

I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I was to run five miles today. In tervals.

I tried to get out of it by clearing the snow from the drive into a small pile…

… but I really didn’t think this was going to carry any weight as an argument, so I set to at lunch-time to perform the required intervals.

It was always going to be tougher than normal: firstly because I was knackered from shovelling snow; and secondly because I only normally do about 3 miles when I’m doing intervals!

I started at 6mph and alternated between this and 7.5mph, plus half a mph for each time around, until I got to 10mph at the 3-mile mark.

I then ran at 8mph until my heart-rate rose to 176 and dropped back to 6mph until my heart-rate fell to 164. And repeated until I reached the required distance.

The result, 5 miles in a very sweaty 42 minutes… an average of 7.14mph. There are easier ways to get to this mean speed, but apparently intervals is what will give me more speed overall, so it’s well worth the effort!

January 10, 2010

Ten on the tenth

I took Cliff’s advice and got out into the snow yesterday… to help my neighbours clear the road. Having spent three hours shovelling snow, pushing wheelbarrows of grit and spreading it around, I didn’t feel the need to get out there again today in my shorts and t-shirt.

Instead I climbed aboard the magic carpet and set about catching my brother’s drift (see comments on previous post https://www.fosterruns.com/2010/01/running-on-the-spot/).

My initial aim was to complete one hour running at 7mph but as I warmed up over the first 800 metres I changed my mind to try to run 7 miles in one hour… it may sound like semantics, but this meant that I had to run faster than 7mph to catch up on the time lost warming up.

I set the carpet to 7.5mph and got on with running as efficiently as possible. This involved focusing on my footfall, making it as steady and controlled as possible. At the same time I remembered what the Bok taught me and relaxed my upper body, arms and jaw and kept breathing steadily.

Actually it was a surprisingly comfortable speed. This was evidenced by my heart rate, which stayed under 160bpm for something like 5 miles. Inexorably it did climb higher, but for the most part it was still under 170bpm.

I think that I passed the 7-mile mark at 58 minutes, but by this point I had recalibrated my goal. Unsure of the exact distinction between a short and a long run on www.FosterRuns.com and unwilling to be accused of only putting in a short run… as well as being a namby-pamby for not running in the snow… I had decided to complete a third of a marathon, which is about 8.7 miles.

By the time I got there however, it seemed churlish not to continue to a nice round ten miles.

I was relieved that by the time I reached ten miles, I did at least feel the effects of the speed I was running… otherwise I may have been forced to revise my marathon target time down even further! Whilst it’s true that I did stagger a little to get across to the study where my camera was, it was nowhere near the level of staggering that I experienced after the early sessions on the machine in August or September. Ergo, despite the sporadic nature of my recent runs, I must be getting stronger!

My heart rate hovered between 170 and 175 for the last couple of miles, but I covered the allotted ten miles in 82 minutes… an average of 7.3mph.

We’re in the process of turning our orange bathroom white and one of the by-products of this is that the shower downstairs is now more powerful… which is one reason that I stood under it for a small age once I had replaced some of the 1276 calories I had burned up.

January 3, 2010January 10, 2010

Running on the spot

Since the sun, at its very brightest this morning, failed even to melt the ice on the car outside, I didn’t even make an effort to venture out to test the temperature. Cold enough methinks.

And yet as a Sunday, I had to run, so I climbed aboard the magic carpet and it took me…. well, absolutely nowhere actually. Despite a lot of effort on my part.

A set of intervals were long overdue, so after a brief warm-up, I did five sets consisting of 200m at 6mph, 200m at 7mph and 400m at 8.5mph, this latter rising by 0.5mph each set. Thus I ended up at around the 3 mile mark running 400m at 10.5mph with a brief rise to 11mph to push my heart rate slightly higher.

After a short recovery, I finished off the session with half a mile at 7mph giving a grand total of 4 miles covered in 34.14… an overall average of pretty much 7mph on the nose. This is the speed I will need to able to run at for 26.2 miles in April if I am to hit my 3 hours 45 minutes target time.

Yikes!

November 26, 2009January 10, 2010

Pulling the stop cord

The running machine has a red cord that you attach to yourself in case you fall off the end… and having fallen off the end of a running machine once, I am an avid user!

Half way through my intervals today, I reached forward with both hands to reduce the speed from 9mph to 6mph at the same time as reducing the gradient from 3 to 2… and pulled the stop cord by mistake. I must have looked like a cartoon character trying to stop before hitting a wall! BANG!!!

Actually I was fine, but it caused me considerable mental strain trying to work out what the time had been before the machine reset itself and thus how long I ran for in the entire session!

I’m still confused, but I’m certain I covered 3.5 miles and I think I did it in 30 minutes & 48 seconds. (or 3.38 miles in 30 minutes). As they say on the trains, only pull the stop cord in an emergency!

November 20, 2009January 10, 2010

Lunchtime intervals return

After a few weeks when work (or apathy) intervened, the lunchtime intervals made a welcome reappearance today.

Low recent mileage meant that I took it pretty easy, flipping between 6mph and 9mph once I was half warmed up, but towards the end I increased the faster intervals to 10mph until my heart rate increased to over 180bpm, then backed off to 9mph.

Overall I covered 3.53 miles in the 30 minute slot… just over 7mph average and I am reassured that I’m still fit, as I recovered really quickly afterwards.

October 28, 2009January 10, 2010

Early indicators for intervals is positive

If I am to keep on running on this little oblong of synthetic black stuff, I realise that I’m going to have to report something more interesting than ‘ran again’ to hold your attention. I will have a think about this.

Today I was interested to see that my heart rate seemed to be a little lower than before, so I focussed around this. My intervals were 6mph for 400m and then 8mph and 9mph for 200m each… for most of the half hour session. Towards the end I raised the bar a little, but kept the recovery stage the same.

To start with I was getting my heart rate back under 140 from a 170 high, but towards the end it had raised at both ends to 150/180.

What was interesting was that, although still dripping with sweat, I felt really composed, like I had hardly stretched myself… although in 30 minutes I covered 3.5 miles, so 7mph… faster than this time last week when I could hardly stand afterwards. This suggests that the intervals are WELL worth doing!

Of course it’s been easy the last couple of weeks as I’ve been developing a workshop, so the workload has been flexible… it’ll be interesting to see whether I’ll be able to keep the training up in the same way when normal service resumes.

Hang on a minute… what’s all this normal service lark? I’ve not done anything that most people would consider normal, work-wise, for several years now!