Tag: body pump

PBs And The Gods Of Sloth

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The Gods of Sloth were looking down on me last night as I was searching for a reason to drink wine. I knew drinking wine would prevent me from getting up early enough to go to my local parkrun but I really fancied some. It didn’t take long for me to find a reason – two reasons, in fact. The first was when I saw the weather forecast predicted 25mph winds and the second – which had me opening that bottle of wine faster than you can say ‘corkscrew’ – was when I saw parkrun had teamed up with a charity that tests on animals. Bad parkrun, bad bad bad!

Still, Janathon doesn’t care about windspeed or any other reasons for not running so I decided to do a parkrun distance on the treadmill at the gym and I must have ran like the wind because I GOT A MUTHAFUCKING PARKRUN PB, WAHOO! Okay, so I didn’t actually get a parkrun PB what with it not being done at an actual parkrun and it probably wasn’t accurate what with it being on a treadmill, but it’s the fastest I’ve run in at least five years and so I’m keeping that wahoo. It’s mine – all mine.

Oh, and in case you think I’ve been slacking the last few days – I haven’t. I’ve just been slack with the blogging but I’ve been gymming and body pumping and cycling and spinning and stuff and if you don’t believe me, here’s my calendar on Running Free Online.

Slacker? Me? Nope.

Slacker? Me? Nope.

Workout To The Beet

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Did you watch Food Unwrapped last night? The girl with the bad hair (okay, so I’m not going to be offered a part in a Timotei advert any time soon, but I wish she’d sort that bale of hay on top of her head out; it’s worse than that restaurant critic woman on Masterchef’s hair) checked out the benefits of beetroot by checking out the muscles on some rugby types and also by having her stamina checked on a stationary bike – once with having beetroot before and once without. The results showed she had far more energy after having the beetroot and so I put it to my own scientific test this morning by having some beetroot juice (I would have gone for the checking-out- the-muscley-rugby-types method but, alas, we were all out of those and, to be honest, rugby players just don’t do it for me anyway).

No, it's not vodka and cranberry juice.

No, it’s not vodka and cranberry juice.

This juice is made of 2 apples, 1 beetroot, 2 carrots, 3 celery sticks, 1/2 a cucumber and 1″ ginger and it really energised me. It energised me so much I lifted heavier weights while doing body pump this morning, despite me not having done any strength-training for weeks, if not months (if you don’t count the 20 minutes of kettlebells I did the other day).

Beetroot works!

Juneathon 2014 – Days 25 and 26 – All The Exercise

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Well, I certainly can’t be accused of slacking yesterday, even if I didn’t blog in the evening. I’m not much of an evening blogger – I’m not much of an evening anything, really. I used to blog all the time in the evening as I used to blog as soon as I’d come back from a run, whatever time that was, even if if was straight after a run commute from work. So, yes, my blogging over the years has definitely slacked off – a bit like my running, I suppose.

Anyway, yesterday morning I went for a five mile run, then in the evening I went to the gym and spent 30 minutes on the rowing machine, then 15 minutes on the cross-trainer, before going to a 45 minute spin class. This morning, I had planned to do my body pump DVD (the 30 minutes of it I like, anyway) but I couldn’t be bothered. However, as we all know, in Juneathon slacking is not an option, so I got on with it.

I do need to do some walking later though as I was perturbed to see I’d lost my number one position on the Fitbit leaderboard and after holding the top spot for a few days, I’ve become pettily competitive about it and I want to be number one again. Stupid Fitbit.

Juneathon 2014 – Days 13 –17 – Including A Run With Other People

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I haven’t slacked as much as you might think, so there. On the 13th (last Friday) I went for a run/walk along the Greensand Way. It would have been more run than walk but the second field had hip-high grass and even a walk was difficult.

The next day I redeemed myself by going to the local parkrun. Despite going along on my own as usual, Helen said she was going to hers and also on her own and she was sure she was going to be really shit as she’s still getting her fitness back after having a baby. So, we decided to telepathically encourage each other round the course. It worked, too, as we both ran it a lot faster than we thought we would. Virtual high-fives all round, yay.

Sunday I walked to Tesco and back. IT COUNTS.

Monday I did some kettlebells and on Tuesday I decided to go out with the local running group (not to be confused with this local running group who were horrific and quite literally pushed me out the door when I said I didn’t know they were running so far and I’d come back another time) and join them for their speedwork/laps session. What they failed to mention on their schedule is that sometimes these laps are HILLS. I hate hills. We slowly ran up to the bottom of the hill and were told to do as many laps as we could in 30 minutes. I tagged along with a couple of the others who have just finished their beginners schedule and after three laps (half the lap is the hill, the second half is a lovely downhill) we decided we’d had enough, but then one of the other girls came along and said ‘come on, you can do one more’ so we gave another lap a go and ran some of the hill and I was pleased with my three and a bit laps as usually when I see a hill, I don’t even attempt it, I just stop and walk up it.

Today, so far I have done 30 minutes of body pump and I’m going to the gym later and then to a spin class.

See, told you I haven’t been slacking. Just slacking on the blogging.

Juneathon Day 4 – A Bit Of Body Pump

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I SWEAR I didn’t slack off on Day 3 – I went for a three mile run, which turned into a six mile walk and when I blogged about it, it turned into a 750 word (so far) essay on wearing glasses. Because it turned into a 750 word (so far) essay, I didn’t have time to finish it before making dinner, then after I’d watched Eastenders, I went back into the conservatory to finish it on the laptop but Shaun said he was going to do his exercising in the conservatory and I’d turned off my main PC upstairs and so I couldn’t finish it. ‘Aha!’ you’re thinking – it’s a laptop – you could take it into a different room (which is also what Shaun said) but if you’ve seen how I’ve got my laptop set up, you’ll see it’s not exactly ready to be picked up and taken elsewhere. It’s on a stand thingy so it’s at an angle and not lying flat and I’ve also got a keyboard and a mouse plugged into it, and the cables for that are woven through the stand thingy, so I’ve kind of unlaptopped it really.

Anyway, that’s just to let you know that I did jog, log and blog yesterday; there’s just not much evidence of it at the mo.

Because I’m off to help out at a book launch this afternoon, then out to the theatre this evening (ooh, get me Miss Culture Vulture), I didn’t have time to do much this morning so I did a bit of body pump. A bit as in everything except the laying down bits, the abs bit and the stretching bit. Yes, that does leave other bits you cheeky gits.

2014-06-04 10.01.54

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 16 – Almost sabotaged by Windows

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I was up later than usual and I had an editing and copywriting seminar in the morning, so to save time, I decided to body pump in my pyjamas and slippers and I even did it while I was still drinking my cup of tea. Now, that’s dedication.

Halfway through though, Windows decided to interrupt my workout by installing updates, then restarting the laptop.

windows-updates

Yes, I swore at it.

Still, deciding my time could probably be spent more productively than swearing a lot and staring at the screen watching the percentage of completed updates slowly creep up to 100%, while I was waiting I emptied the dishwasher.

Dedication and multitasking, and I hadn’t even finished my cup of tea.

I am hardcore.

Janathon Day 13 – multitasking

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Body pump in the conservatory was planned for this morning but the laptop decided not to work until I’d restarted it and let it do its disc check thingy (haven’t seen a disc check thingy since the days of *shudder* Vista), so while it was doing its thing, I decided to make some peanut butter granola bars. These are super-mega easy to make, can be adapted to fit in with your store-cupboard ingredients and are quite healthyish I think (healthier than Ferrero Rocher, peanut butter fudge, salted chocolate, chocolate biscuits, pizza and garlic bread – which was yesterday’s diet – anyway).

peanut-butter-granola-bars

(Photo from my Planet Veggie blog)

By the time I’d put them in the oven, the laptop had decided to play nicely and by the time I’d finished my workout, the granola bars were cool enough to eat. Result. (Obviously there was a bit in the middle where I’d taken the granola bars out of the oven.)

Peanut butter granola bars (makes 9 bars, 150 calories per bar)

150g granola (or muesli)
4tbsp crunchy peanut butter (or smooth)
4tbsp Golden Syrup (or healthier stuff)
1 tbsp wholewheat flour (or plain)

  1. Slowly melt the peanut butter and Golden Syrup in a saucepan.
  2. Add the granola and flour to the peanut butter and Golden Syrup mix and stir thoroughly.
  3. Press the mixture into an 8” square tin and bake in the oven at 180C for about 8-10 minutes, or until the edges are turning brown (it can burn easily, so keep an eye on it).
  4. Score lightly into 9 pieces.
  5. Leave to cool, then cut them into 9 pieces.

Janathon Day 10 – I remember when…

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…I didn’t leave assignments until the last minute. Oh, hang on, no – that must be someone else I’m thinking of. I’ve got an assignment due at midnight and at the moment I’ve only written down a few notes and made a couple of sketches (I’m designing two adverts – one for readers of The Telegraph and one for readers of The Sun, then talking about why I’ve used certain words and images in them), so if anyone sees me on Facebook or Twitter between now and then, unless I’ve said ASSIGNMENT SUBMITTED, YAY, please send Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey a message telling them to disconnect me from their social networks.

Ta.

In the meantime, here’s what I’ve done for Janathon so far today.

body-pump

This weekend’s activities will hopefully be a parkrun tomorrow and a 38 mile bike ride on Sunday. Although, this depends on a) whether I get up on time; and b) how far I get with my dissertation proposal that’s due in by midnight on Monday.

Janathon Day 8 – body pump is great

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Just a quick blog today, as I MUST get on with my university assignment that’s due the day after tomorrow, which I haven’t started yet (I must admit I was relieved yesterday when I went in and found out I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t started it yet).

So, today’s Janathon activity was my body pump DVD. I used my Scosche Rhythm armband heart rate monitor again, but this time with the Rhythm app, which tends to be more accurate than the MyTrek app (or maybe it’s the monitor that’s more accurate, not the app, I’m not an expert on these things).

scosche-body-pump

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