First rule of running club fails… and a new ailment

A particularly bad run this morning where for the first time ever, the First Rule of Running Club failed.

For those of you who have missed any related posts, the First Rule of Running Club was devised by my pal David. The First Rule of Running Club dictates that you must got for a number two before going on a run… the theory is that if you don’t, you’ll want to half way through the run.

Well I followed the first rule and I still wanted to go half way through the run – which made for a particularly uncomfortable second half of the run.

The strange pain in the bottom of my left foot was also playing on my mind. With every step, I get a small stabbing pain coming up in the area just before my toes… it’s not unbearable but not pleasant either.

So this evening, I decided to venture back to my running heroine, Lillian, the sports maseuse at the Virgin Active gym in Streatham. She gave me a good going over, releasing some of the pressure on my aching muscles and in particular the adductors (the ones on the inside of your thigh). But she also found what is wrong with my foot – apparently, I’ve a little bit of tendonitis and I could feel it clicking as she tried to massage it away.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a map and details of the run

Miles today: 5
Target: 972
Miles to date: 1,330.75

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Fancy a 24 hour run?

There’s a race coming up in two Saturday’s time that I would have loved to take part in: the Adidas TR24.

It’s a 24 hour cross country race for teams of up to eight over a 10km course. Basically, you always have to have one of your team  running the course over the 24 hours. So you could do, say 20km (or two laps), let someone else go out for a lap or two, followed by someone else and when you have recovered, you can go again.

It’s all part of this new drive by Adidas for their new running community testadidas.co.uk and invited participants get the following:

-          Free entry to TR24 to be part of the adidas team

-          Free pair of Swoop 2 trail shoes

-          Free running kit (tops and bottoms)

-          Free catering / refreshments on the day

-          Free massages

Unfortunately, I cant take part as it is the weekend of Laura’s sister’s wedding but the team publicising the event are looking for willing participants.

As it’s part of the ‘test adidas’ trial if you fancy a go, you would also have to take part in the community with some online reviews of kit and the like, it’s at www.testadidas.co.uk which goes live this week.

If you want to sign up, drop a line to

Atheer [at] wildfirecompany.com

From a running perspective, I did another five miler today, heading out on what has now become a familiar route to the Virgin Active gym and back.

I’ve my first practical assessment in gym instructing this weekend which will get me the first part of my PT diploma and allow me to start training people in gyms if I wish so it was good to get some practice time in on equipment that will be used in the exam.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a map and details of the run

Miles today: 5
Target: 909
Miles to date: 1,219.63

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Mileage passes 1150 and getting burnt

So I actually passed 1150 yesterday with a 4.2miler but really didn’t have time to put anything on the blog about it so I’ve just updated the figures for yesterday and left it at that.

I’ve been feeling a little sluggish since I upped the mileage to five miles a day over the last two weeks and have been trying to drop my pace to turn the runs into recovery ones, rather than proper pace ones.

This morning, I again split a five miler with a session at the local Virgin Active which gives me chance to practice on some of the resistance machines that I need to brush up on for my practical gym instructor exam on the PT course which is in a couple of week’s time.

I normally wear little gym gloves when doing weights as my hands tend to callous quite easily (it comes from having soft jobs for the last 20 years I think) but I couldnt wear them this morning.

Last night, I made some pasta and as I was emptying it into a sieve, a load of the hot water splashed all over my hand. Despite sleeping – at Laura’s insistence – with my hand in a bucket of water all night, I’ve still got a couple of nasty blisters on two fingers this morning…

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 5
Target: 876
Miles to date: 1,155.81

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Nothing on yesterday

I’d love today’s run to have been half as exciting as yesterdays but sadly, there were no young lads beating the shit out of themselves today.

I did allow myself a bit of a lie in though – ha – starting my first run of the week, a 5 miler,  at 7am. It was hot and sticky and, because I had my course over the weekend, it felt like it should be a Sunday until I saw the hundreds of cars clogging up Streatham High Road.

I split the run up with a session at the gym and spent an hour there going over all the resistance machines in anticipation of my next assessment on the course.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 5
Target: 867
Miles to date: 1,141.61

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

1,100 miles passed and “I can’t wait for some chips”

So I know it’s not much of another milestone, given I passed my 1095 mile target just yesterday but today’s run took me past 1,100 miles so far.

With the weather so warm, I’ve decided on gym days I’m going to split my run: run up to the gym, do some weights and run back…. Normally that would be about three miles but today I decided to take a long route and up things to a five miler… There could be a reason for this – well there is in my head – but I’m not sure whether I should go public with it yet – I’ll see how this week goes.

I got the Virgin Active in Streatham just after opening and so it was pretty quiet, apart from the chap I sometimes see working out who seems to know everyone in the gym and greets them all with a massive guffaw and has a little bit of chit chat. Today – and I’m not sure why – it was Bond films.

There was also another girl there who I sometimes see. A young black lady, lithe as you like – I mean there is not an ounce of extra body fat on her and although she exercises alone, she clearly “beasts” herself to the extreme.

Today I found out why. She was speaking to loud bloke and I only caught part of the conversation but she is about to compete in something (not sure what) abroad next week. The guy was asking her how it was going and she seemed quite confident.

She also said she couldn’t wait to finish so she could have a bag of chips. “Really?” replied loud bloke. “Not a banana or something?” “Nah,” she said. “A bag of chips. I’ve not had one for two years.”

That, friends, is dedication.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 5
Target: 843
Miles to date: 1,103.31

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Shocking experience at the gym

I was back in the gym for today’s run – once again I’ve left any strength conditioning to one side and feel bad about it. And once again, I’ve vowed to start going a couple of times a week again.

I keep an old pair of iPhone headphones at the gym that go into a socket on the treadmill and allow me to watch whatever is on one of the screens while I’m running. There was a slight problem today though… the phones were shorting and I got a couple of short, sharp zaps in the right ear before I abandoned the idea. The phones are now abandoned in a nearby bin.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for details of the run

Miles today: 3.11
Target: 804
Miles to date: 1,054.50

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Screwing up the run at the gym

This morning I decided to run at the gym so I could get a weight session in afterward. To measure runs on treadmills accurately and prove I’ve done the run, I’ve bought a Garmin Foot Pod that links to my GPS enabled watch.

Normally when I run outdoors, the GPS links to a satellite and that tracks my run. Obviously if I’m on a treadmill, it can’t do this as it looks to the GPS as though I’m running static and it shows me going nowhere.

The Foot Pod acts as a pedometer, counting the number of strides I take and has been calibrated with me running outdoors so its’ pretty accurate when it comes to measuring how far I’ve ran as it takes into account my stride length.

The thing is, for the Foot Pod to work, I need to turn the GPS off otherwise the two methods of measuring the run send conflicting information to the watch and hence the record goes all out of whack – which is what happened today.

I’m pretty sure I turned the GPS off before I started running and the watch showed that it had detected the Foot Pod, so set off on the treadmill, turned my headphones to the Andrew Marr show that was on one of the TVs and settled into a rhythm watching first Ed Milliband announce how we would lead the Labour party if he gets the job and then David Cameron say how he’s going to lead the country now he’s got the job.

After half an hour I looked at the treadmill, saw I’d done 5.5km (3.4 miles) and stopped…. only to look at the watch and see that it had only recorded one mile as the GPS was still turned on and it was overriding the Foot Pod.

Clearly, I’d done more than three miles but was almost ready to go outside and run another two to prove I’d really done three for the day. Thankfully, when I downloaded the details to Garmin Connect (that hosts all my runs) I noticed there is a ‘cadence’ value that shows how many times my left leg (the one with the Food Pod) hit the floor during the course of the run.

This showed I’d averaged 84 steps a minute with my left, ie 168 steps a minute with both. I reckon each of my running strides is around 3.5ft long, ie I was covering 588ft a minute! As I ran for 30 minutes, I covered 17,640ft, which is almost 3.4miles… and verifies was the treadmill was saying! Phew! I’ll add just three miles to my totals to be safe rather than sorry.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for details of the day’s run

Miles today: 3
Target: 717
Miles to date: 953.07

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Feeling a little sore

Hm, so yesterday’s gym session has left me a little sore… most of all in my chest from bench presses and in my upper thighs from squatting. Each arm stroke when running today saw a little tightness around the chest – in that weird pleasure-pain way, where it hurts but feels good.

Great day for an early run though: bright, sunny, not too hot, not too many people around. Exactly what it would have been great to have the bank holiday like instead of pissing it down… sometimes nothing changes

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and full details of the day’s run

Miles today: 3
Target: 681
Miles to date: 897.64

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Back to the gym

I’ve not been to the gym in ages and felt that I was losing a bit of upper body strength and so I went to my local Virgin Active today doing three miles on the treadmill, followed by a decent weights session.

On the treadmill, I found myself next to a young lad who looked like a lithe proper runner, he’d only been on a couple of minutes longer than me and so I decided to follow his speed, increasing whenever he did. He obviously realised this and it soon became a bit of a game where he kept going progressively faster. I was in buckets of sweat when my three miles were up and gave him a rue smile as I got off the treadmill and he continued.

As for the weights, well I’d forgotten how much I like a spot of resistance training, I really need to get back into the habit of doing a couple or three sessions a week.

Virgin Active gym by mcinner at Garmin Connect – Details.

Miles today: 3
Target: 678
Miles to date: 894.64

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

The penultimate Brighton Marathon run

So the penultimate run before Sunday’s Brighton Marathon went well this morning. I didn’t really push it and also didn’t look at the Garmin again as I was running to check my speed and still did under 9mins 30secs a mile.

I also went to my last sports massage before the face. Lillian at the Virgin Active where I’m a member said my legs seem to be in good shape and she gave me a big thumbs up saying my calves are probably the most supple of all the runners she is treating – and this at the height of marathon season, which I was pretty chuffed about.

She also gave me a little present for post the race – a bottle of body soak Radox to relax the muscles.

Diet wise, Im at the heart of carb loading now. I’ve eaten enough brown rice and spaghetti this week to feed half of China and all of Italy – I’ve got a spag bol on the cooker as I type! The idea is to have a decent amount in your body so you don’t run out of fuel in the race itself…

Got to admit, I’m also feeling pretty nervous about it all so I’m trying a few breathing and visualisation techniques. Just closing my eyes, lots of deep breaths til Im relaxed and then seeing the finish in my mind’s eye…

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a Google Map and full details of the day’s run

Miles today: 3
Target: 627
Miles to date: 818.09

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here