Category: Treadmill

Juneathon Day 8 – A New Week In Which To Redeem Myself

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Sennheiser Thru the Gears

The first week of Juneathon is over and now begins a whole new fresh week – a week in which I can hopefully redeem myself after the slackathon that began the first week.

I had planned to run today but when I got up, my legs were still aching from last week’s run (although I don’t think they can still be aching from last week’s run; it must be from something else. What that something else is though, I haven’t a clue. Maybe lack of crisps or something.) so I decided to go to the gym and go on the rowing machine which usually sorts any DOMS out.

But because I had planned to run though, and because I am supposed to be marathon training training – especially as marathon training singular starts next week, eek – I thought I’d do some intervals on the treadmill when I got to the gym. Intervals are an integral part of training, after all.

So, I did 30 minutes on the rowing machine, then as I was scrolling through my Audiofuel playlist looking for the Pyramid Max 180 interval session, I saw the Sennheiser Thru The Gears track which is my absolute favourite Audiofuel track as it gives you such a fantastic workout on the treadmill, so I gave that a blast, then I went on the cross-trainer for 20 minutes.

Not a bad workout for a Monday, eh?

Well done everyone on your efforts throughout the first week of Juneathon – I hope you’re all enjoying yourselves. Personally, it’s given me the boost I needed to motivate me to get back into exercising as I’ve been a bit slack over the last few weeks. Hopefully it’ll give me a good base for the beginning of my marathon training too.

Oh, and I promise to run tomorrow. Punky promise. (That’s pinky promise as autocorrected by my phone.)

Stats

Rowing machine: 30 minutes
Treadmill: 15 minutes
Cross-trainer: 20 minutes
Juneathon’s completed: 6/30

Janathon Day 29 – forgetfulness

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I did a new body pump DVD this morning then went to the gym and went on the cross-trainer and went on the treadmill then when I got home I was going to blog but ran out of time because I was going out to lunch

lentil-nut-and-quinoa-burger

and when I got back, I’d forgotten all the things I was going to put in my blog.

Probably wasn’t very interesting anyway, although I do seem to remember it was going to contain the word ‘wankers’.

Janathon Day 26 – 10,000 steps by 11am

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I slept really badly last night, the only good bit was the dream I had about finding a puppy hiding in the toilet, although it was disappointing when I woke up and there was no puppy.

My Fitbit tracks my sleep and it told me I woke up eleven times, which is probably about right but it also said I slept at 97% efficiency. Waking up eleven times doesn’t sound like 97% efficiency to me.

sleep

My Fitbit also tracks how many steps I take (in fact, it seems to be just an overpriced pedometer really, although some people absolutely love theirs – I’m still waiting to love mine) and when I got back from the gym this morning, it sent me a badge to say I’d done my daily target of 10,000.

10000-steps

When I got to the gym, there was a tall bloke on the treadmill and it reminded me of one of the guests on Friday’s Room 101 when he said he gets annoyed when people go up to him and say ‘you’re tall’ like he doesn’t know he’s tall and I thought uh oh, I may have once or twice* gone up to a tall bloke and poked him in the chest and said, ‘you’re tall’ but, in my defence, I haven’t said ‘you’re tall’ to inform him he’s tall in case he hadn’t noticed, I’ve said it to take his mind off me poking him in the chest.

 

*every time I’m drunk and there’s a tall man in my vicinity**.

**not a euphemism.

Janathon Day 18 – parkrunning on a cross-trainer

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Dammit, because I got up too late to go to my local parkrun, I told the WHOLE INTERNET I’d do a parkrun distance (i.e. 5k) on the treadmill instead. I got to the gym and went on the rowing machine first and in the mirror in front of me, I could see all three treadmills behind me were being used (and being used by walkers, bah) and I thought, would it be really rude to go and stand next to a treadmill, queueing up, like people used to do in the gym in London when all the machines were in use? I decided it would be really rude, so I decided to do the 5k on the cross-trainer instead.

Before I’d got to the gym, I’d handpicked my own playlist and I was reminded Julia Buckley posted her playlist on Facebook the other day. Julia said it was her ‘trendy’ playlist and I debated her use of the word ‘trendy’, as it – as far as I could tell – had nothing post-90s on it (which isn’t a bad thing. I am a huge 90s-indie-Britpop fan). While I was on the cross-trainer though listening to my playlist, the words ‘pot’, ‘kettle’ and ‘black’ came into my head as Ben Folds Five, Elastica, The Cult, Hole, etc. popped up and I thought I’m hardly down wiv da kidz either.

playlist-18012014

But then ‘What Doesn’t Kill You’ by Jake Bugg  came on, and a little later ‘Reflektor’ by Arcade Fire came on and I thought yay, those songs were out last year – I am down wiv da kidz after all. Get me, I’ll be watching X-Factor next.

And because I’d told the WHOLE INTERNET I was going on the treadmill, I did ten minutes on it to make my gym session up to an hour.

I’m now pondering going to the park tomorrow to do my own parkrun, but I reserve the right to postpone my ponder if it’s pissing down.

Bananas, bowls and belligerence

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We have riveting conversations in this house. Like, who gets to eat the last banana? I said it should be me because I was going to the gym and needed a banana smoothie beforehand and Shaun thought it should be him because he eats the exact same food items every single day, except for his evening meal, where he usually gets something different every single day, as I do most of the cooking.

But then I remembered my new animal bowls and so I thought ‘aha, I can have cereal and use one of my new bowls, hooray’ and so I relented and let Shaun have the last banana.

So, this morning, after I’d had my tea, I merrily skipped off to the kitchen to choose which animal bowl I was going to use.

Aarrgghh, dilemma! Because there’s been a huge demand for pig and cat bowls, Shaun couldn’t get me a full set, and so I didn’t have the corresponding pig bowl to go with the pig mug I had already used for my tea

 

but as I have all my animal mugs lined up in a row on the kitchen windowsill, I looked to see what tomorrow’s mug will be (they get used in the order they are on the windowsill, with no deviation allowed; accidental deviation occurred a few weeks ago and we couldn’t come to an agreement on how to reset the system; I wanted to start again from the beginning,  Shaun said I should, the following week, skip the one I had used twice. [A photo has been taken  now of the order they’re in and no more deviation can take place]) and tomorrow’s mug is the dog mug

and hurrah, one of the two new bowls was the dog bowl (it has just occurred to me that tomorrow I will be eating out of a dog bowl, hmm)

and so although today was quite stressful what with having to eat my cereal out of a horse bowl

when I’d drunk my tea out of a pig mug, at least equilibrium will be restored tomorrow.

Phew.

Luckily there were no more dilemmas to tax my brain on the way to the gym (although my jaw dropped a bit as I overtook a woman yelling at her daughter that she was a ‘thickhead’) and I got there early and went on the rowing machine and a fake-tanned peroxide-headed girl came in wearing sunglasses. Not normal glasses that react and might have gone dark in the bright light but proper big oversized chavvy ones. Still wearing her oversized sunglasses, she plonked her oversized handbag on the floor, laid down on the exercise mat, did about three sit-ups, got up, picked up her bag and wandered off.

I did my spin class with a surprising amount of energy (must be true what they say then about needing fuel to exercise), then got on the treadmill to do Thru the Gears and managed to go faster and faster right ‘til the very end (ok, the very end is only about 13 minutes away from the beginning but I usually slack off and walk for a bit before speeding up again).

After I’d finished on the treadmill, I went back into the changing rooms where there were two young boys about five years old sitting on the bench. I was cycling back in my gym gear so it wasn’t much of a problem, although I wasn’t completely happy about there being young boys in there. But if I had wanted to get changed, I’d have had to go into a cubicle as I wouldn’t have wanted to strip in front of them. When I got home, I asked on Twitter if people thought it was ok to have boys in the changing room and 99% said yes (unsurprisingly, they were all female parents) and although the majority were against me, the more I thought about it, the more I thought no, they shouldn’t have been there. My gym has brilliant facilities and there is a crèche for them to use and as children don’t go in the gym, if they’d been in the swimming pool, then they should have used the swimming pool changing rooms which are communal and no nudity is allowed outside the cubicles. So, if these parents think it’s ok for young boys to be in a room where there are women changing, it must be ok for their young daughters to also be in a room where there are men changing? I’m pretty sure most blokes wouldn’t want to strip off in front of a five year old girl.

Weird.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 5 miles
Time: 30 minutes
Speed: 10mph

Rowing machine
20 minutes

Spin
Time: 45 minutes

Treadmill
Distance: 1.22 miles
Time: 14:31

The mystery of the bird-poo-covered car

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My getting up early thing yesterday must have been a fluke, as today I didn’t get up ‘til 9, and that was only because I had a spin class at 10:30 and it takes me over an hour to leave the house and so I got up and looked out the window and sitting in the driveway, instead of the car that Shaun had been driving to replace his normal one was his usual car, covered in bird-poo and although I hadn’t asked Shaun where his car was, it didn’t occur to me that he’d sent it off to get covered in shit and be returned in the early hours of the morning.

After I’d finished pondering the poo mystery, I got my stuff together and went to the gym. As I’d got up late, I didn’t get much time to do anything else before the class, so just did eight minutes on the rowing machine then went and did the class, then I got back on the rowing machine to make it up to twenty minutes and two men got on the machines either side of me and I turned round and there was a whole row of machines behind me that were empty and I wondered if I should tell them the concept of personal space but I only had three minutes to be annoyed and then I wanted to go and do Thru the Gears on the treadmill but Lightning Blue Eyes by Secret Machines came on my iPod

and I thought ooooooooooooooh, I must listen to this first and so I walked on the treadmill while Secret Machines were playing and then I did Thru the Gears and I must have been putting some effort into it, despite what my pace says, as I was sweating buckets and then I went shopping and bought the most unromantic anniversary present in the world ever.

Ho hum.

Stats
Cycling: 5 miles / 30 minutes
Spin: 45 minutes
Rowing machine: 20 minutes
Treadmill: 1.43 miles / 17 minutes
Cars appearing overnight covered in shit: 1
Unromantic anniversary presents: 1

Pump it up

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This morning I went along to the gym for my usual body pump class where I was very hardcore and used heavier weights and hurrah, my arms didn’t crack on the tricep tracks, so the glucosamine that I’ve started taking again must be doing their thing (or it’s the magic bracelet) and then after body pump I went and did twenty minutes on the rowing machine, then I had planned to do just a mile on the treadmill, although running on the treadmill doesn’t really count as running, but then I decided to do Thru the Gears and then usually on a Friday I go and do spin too but as I have a five mile run tomorrow, I didn’t really want to wear myself out even if it is Juneathon and so I wimped out of doing spin and got changed and then I had to go to the library and I decided to leave my bike where it was and walk the half mile to the library as after all, it is Juneathon, and Juneathon is all about making an extra effort and so I walked to the library and as I passed Top Shop, I saw a sign saying 20% off for students this week and so I went in and saw a stripey t-shirt that I had been eyeing the other day and I tried to work out what 20% off would be and then I saw a t-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it and I wondered if I was too old to wear a t-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it and decided I was and left the shop and opposite was Dorothy Perkins with a sign saying 30% off today and so I went in but there was nothing I liked so I went back into Top Shop and thought fuck it, if I want to wear a t-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it I will and so I bought the Mickey Mouse t-shirt and the stripey t-shirt and with my student discount got £8 off and then I went to the library to collect the books that had been reserved for me and then I strolled back through the town looking at all the teenage girls smoking over their babies and got back to my bike and cycled back.

Stats
Body pump: 45 minutes
Rowing machine: 20 minutes
Treadmill: 15 minutes
Walking: 1 mile
Cycling: 5 miles
Calories: about 845
Stripey t-shirts: 1
Mickey Mouse t-shirt: 1
Library books: 2
Teenage girls smoking over their babies: A few

Audiofuel: Sennheiser Thru the Gears review and free download

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Update: Please note since I wrote this post, the free download is no longer available.

 

thru-the-gears

Audiofuel have teamed up with Sennheiser to compose a 15 minute soundtrack called Thru the Gears.

I was a bit hesitant at first to try it, as it’s got some mean looking man on the cover dressed in an Adidas hoodie but as I’ve played to death all the other Audiofuel tracks, I thought it would be a nice change to have something fresh to listen to while I went on the treadmill at the gym.

It’s a coaching track, so you’re told what to do and when and a girl with a nice roboty kind of voice tells you to stretch for a minute, then to walk for a minute, then to increase the speed for three minutes, then another three minutes, then two minutes, then there’s a cool down period where you walk and stretch. I didn’t bother with the stretching bit and just walked during those bits.

This session is amazing. Proper amazing. It really powers up as you get faster and faster and there’s pianos and strings and guitars and bass and everything and it all mounts up to one massive crescendo and you forget how knackered you are as all you can feel is one big fuck off buzz.

After I’d finished, I wanted to do it all over again but as I had a body pump class starting, I nipped into the changing room to get my phone out of my locker and to post on Audiofuel Sean’s Facebook wall to thank him for the big fuck off buzz I’d just had.

Then I did my body pump class and went home and told Shaun how good it was and then I told everyone on Twitter how good it was and it really was so good that I went back to the gym this morning to do it all over again and I got the same buzz, so it’s obviously not like heroin where you don’t get the same buzz after the first time (so I hear, obviously I’ve never had anything stronger than a Junior Disprin…).

And, amazingly, this track is FREE! Free to everyone! Hurrah!

Click here to be taken to the Audiofuel website for your free Thru the Gears download.

Stats
Distance: Don’t know as I wasn’t taking much notice
Time: 15 minutes
Free soundtracks: 1
Big fuck off buzzes: 2

Ouch, ache, ow, ache, etc.

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Yesterday I woke up hardly able to move after Friday’s epic (for me) cycle/body pump/swim Janathlon and so this morning I didn’t think I was up for a run but asked Twitter anyway if I should run or go to the gym and only two people responded and they both responded that it was too cold to run and I should go to the gym, which means that a) they are obviously not runners; and b) therefore don’t know that runners are hardcore and not put off by the weather being a bit nippy.

But as I was aching so much, I decided to go to the gym and see if some rowing could sort my aches out. When I got to the gym, as it was the weekend, there was someone different on reception and as I went to go inside she said are you going to the gym and so I said yes and she said can you sign in please? and so I gave her my card and said I haven’t signed in once in the year I’ve been coming here and she tutted and sighed and rolled her eyes and shook her head and if she’d been standing up, she probably would have put her hands on her hips and she said you must be sneaking in then, and I think well, if sneaking in means saying hello to whoever’s on reception at the time, then yes, I’ve been sneaking in and she says you must sign in and I say ok then and then I go inside and get changed and go on the rowing machine and there are two girls walking really slowly on treadmills and not only are they walking really slowly on treadmills, they’re walking really slowly on flat treadmills and not only are they walking really slowly on flat treadmills, they’re HOLDING ON TO THE FLIPPING HANDRAILS, like they’re really going to fall off the flat treadmills that they’re walking really slowly on and I do thirty minutes on the rowing machine and then I get on the treadmill and RUN ON IT like you’re supposed to and sitting on the weights machine next to me is a girl talking on her phone and I keep giving her sideways dirty looks but she doesn’t seem to notice and I tut and she doesn’t notice that either and I wonder if I should roll my eyes and shake my head and put my hands on my hips but decide that running on a treadmill with my hands on my hips would make me look even more stupid than I usually do and the girl on the phone eventually fucks off to sit on another machine and do nothing but talk on her phone there instead and I do thirty minutes on the treadmill and then I go home and I’m aching more than I did when I got up.

Stats (rowing machine)
Time: 30 minutes
Distance: 4400 yards (I think)
Calories: 225

Treadmill
Time: 25 minutes (+ 5 minutes cool down)
Distance: 2.3 miles
Pace: 10:52 m/m
Calories: 242

On the 20th day of Juneathon, I went to the gym

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Last week I’d arranged with myself to go to the gym this morning before supermarket shopping but when I woke up, I couldn’t really be bothered and I said to Sir Limpalot I don’t want to go to the gym and he said ok then, you can help me with the gardening and so I got changed into my gym gear and went to the gym.

When I got to the gym there was a sign saying that Ashford Community Church was there and all were welcome and I thought maybe I should go to church instead of the gym but then I wondered how many calories you burn praying and I thought probably not many, unless it’s one of those happy-clappy churches were people do a lot of dancing and singing and not just a normal church where you listen to the vicar saying thou shalt not steal from the collection box and stuff and so I decide not to go and do some praying but to go to the gym as originally planned and I haven’t been to this gym on a Sunday before and it’s quite busy and I get on an elliptical trainer and stay on that for 20 minutes and then I got on the rowing machine and I wanted to do 20 minutes on that and then go on the treadmill but when I got to 20 minutes, the treadmills were still being used by people walking on them so I decide to do 25 minutes on the rowing machine but at 21 minutes and 30 seconds, someone stops walking on a treadmill and gets off and I think oh no, I can’t get off the rowing machine at 21 minutes and 30 seconds, I’ll have to round it up to 25 minutes and so I stay on the rowing machine and hope no one else gets on a treadmill but someone does and I’m looking at the clock and at 24 minutes and a bit there’s still people walking on the treadmills but at 24 minutes and 50 seconds someone gets off a treadmill and I stare at it for 10 seconds before getting off the rowing machine and getting on the treadmill and running on it for 10 minutes.

Stats (gym)
Elliptical trainer: 20 minutes
Rowing machine: 25 minutes
Calories: 305

Treadmill:
Distance: 0.95 miles
Time: 10 minutes
Pace: 10:32 m/m
Calories: 97
Calories burnt through praying: 0

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