A light-hearted look at running, cycling and general fitness
Got up late, got detoured by a flooded subway, got lost, got my hair cut, got wet, got a cup of hot chocolate and some toasted Bara brith, got warm.
Okay, I lied about the last bit, I haven’t got warm yet.
So, Janathon is over; I’ll write a longer post tomorrow but well done everyone, hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
Janathon 2014 totals:
Days exercised: 31/31
Running: 26.66 miles
Cycling: 151.89 miles
Cross-training: 11:42 hours
Calories: 11,745
This is going to sound like such a cop out, but today’s ‘running’ was jogging on the spot. Well, it was going to be jogging on the spot for five minutes but I got bored after twenty-three seconds so I started running laps of the rug in the conservatory but I got too dizzy so I started running laps of the downstairs then decided to bring in upstairs too then found out that it’s not really possible to run upstairs so carried on running downstairs from one end of the house to the other until my five minutes was up.
Yeah, rubbish ‘running’ effort but I have done six miles on the bike today too. Am I forgiven?
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
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’.
Woke up. Remembered yesterday I’d sort of promised to the Janathon community I’d run on each of the last days of Janathon. Swore a lot.
A promise is a promise though – even if it’s only a sort of promise – but I toyed with the idea of asking if I could be let off because my running shoes were still wet from yesterday’s run, but then I remembered the whole of the internet has seen my shoe rack
so probably knows I’ve got a few spare pairs (to my shame, I’ve got running shoes I haven’t even tried on yet), then I also remembered Louise went out in damp running shoes the other day which is even more hardcore than those fifty mile ultra-marathons she takes part in and so I realised damp shoes probably aren’t a good enough excuse to back out on my sort of promise.
I had a good reason to go out though – I’d asked the Janathon sheep expert, @Jovial Gnome (who has pet sheep and assures me they are only pets and not future roast dinners), if he knew what the dumpy sheep with the squashed faces were, as there are some near me and I was too scared to Google ‘sheep with squashed faces’ for obvious reasons and he said to take a photo and he’d have a look.
So, armed with my phone, I set off on my run and when I got to the sheep field the bastard sheep were right over the other side and even if my phone had a 20x optical zoom (which it doesn’t), the bastard sheep were facing the wrong way and I’d only manage a close up of their woolly bums, which would be nice, but not what I was after.
A couple of fields down though were some more sheep facing the right way but I’m not sure if this is the same type of sheep I saw before with the squashed faces.
Still cute though. Any other sheep experts out there?
It just crossed my mind that for the last few days of Janathon, I could run every day to finish with a flourish. But then I realised this is an uncharacteristically busy week for me and running every day isn’t going to be an easy thing to achieve. But, I feel kind of committed now and Janathon’s supposed to be a challenge, isn’t it?
So, you heard it here. I ran today and I’m going to run on each of the last four days (not promising they’re all going to be outside runs though).
When I came back from today’s run, I had one of the low fat sultana muffins I made yesterday (recipe on my Planet Veggie blog), as Anita Bean (whose book – Food for Fitness – I got the recipe from) said they’re the ‘perfect refuelling snack that no athlete should be without’, which just sounds to me like an excuse to eat cakes at 9:30am, but hey ho.
Good luck with the rest of Janathon, those of you who are doing it. Who’s got something special planned for the finish?
Don’t forget there are prizes for the best planks (details on Helen’s blog), so keep your photos coming in.
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.
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.
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.
After trying out the Fitness Blender kettlebells workout I’d found on youtube yesterday (the video is on yesterday’s post), I thought I’d do the whole 33 minutes today. It comprises a 3 minute warm-up (mostly jogging on the spot), then 3 rounds of kettlebell exercises. Yesterday I’d only completed the first round so I was excited (that may be a slight exaggeration) to find out what exercises were in the other two rounds. I wasn’t excited for long though, as the second two rounds were exactly the same as the first round.
Oh.
I had a look at their website just now and they have dozens of free workout videos on there, for all kinds of exercise (cardio, yoga, strength, etc.). You can search for the kind of workout you want, including type, difficulty level, duration and calories burned, or the equipment you own (including ‘slosh tube’, whatever that is).
I only discovered Fitness Blender yesterday – is this a website everyone else in the world had already heard of?
I have no idea if ‘kettlebelling’ is a valid word – it sounds a bit rude, doesn’t it? Still, Argos delivered my kettlebells today (I say ‘delivered’, I mean the delivery man dumped them on the ground and left me to lug them indoors) and I was desperate to try them out.
Not having any kettlebell workout DVDs, I looked up kettlebell workouts on youtube instead and came across this beginner’s one from Fitness Blender.
Choosing the lightest weight (2.5kg) because I’m such a weed, I skipped the warm up (it involved jogging on the spot and I was wearing normal clothes, i.e. not gym kit and sports bra) and did ten minutes of the kettlebells bit.
I don’t know what I was expecting but those ten minutes were fun and more of a workout than I thought it’d be – my heart rate was definitely raised, although I couldn’t tell for sure as my heart rate monitor decided not to work. It was a weights/cardio hybrid I’ll be giving it another go at the weekend when I’m more appropriately attired and not about to make my dinner.
Argos also delivered to me (and this was handed to me, not dumped on the ground) a Fitbit which I was mega-excited to get as it’ll track my steps and sleep and stuff. And it’s orange, which is obviously the best thing about it. I’ll write more about that another time, when I’ve played with it for longer.
I almost turned into one of those silly obsessives this morning. After drinking a bottle and a half of wine last night, one of my first thoughts this morning was GOTTA BURN ALL THOSE CALORIES OFF but we all know it’s thoughts like that that lead to eating disorders and so instead I thought GOTTA DO MY JANATHON and dragged myself off to the gym after I’d finished offending a friend on Facebook (I don’t know why she was offended, I only said she looked like a prostitute).
I was happily rowing on the rowing machine when a man sat down on the one next to me. And continued to sit. And sit. And sit and sit and sit and I thought JUST ROW ON THE MACHINE, DAMMIT but he continued to sit and this annoyed me so much I got up and flounced over to the cross-trainer and he continued to sit for another two and a half minutes then started to row, yay, but only for four minutes, then he stopped and sat again.
Another thing that annoyed me in the gym today was people talking. People should not be allowed to talk in gyms unless it’s ‘ouch’, ‘help’, or ‘call an ambulance’.
Did you know The Montmorency cherry has been discovered to be a rich source of powerful antioxidants and flavonoids which promote a host of health and recovery benefits including healthy joint function, normal uric acid levels, a healthy cardiovascular system, regular sleep patterns, and muscular strength & recovery? No, nor me (I don’t know what uric acid levels – normal or otherwise – are either).
Still, it all sounds like a good thing, so I gave some CherryActive Concentrate a go. It contains 100% cherry juice (over 3,000 cherries in a bottle – that’s a lot of cherries), so no preservatives, flavourings, sugars or colours and stuff.
Because it’s a concentrate, you don’t need much – a 30ml serving provides one of your five a day. I originally tried some in water but I didn’t like it. It was sour and bitter – maybe I used too much, but I tried it again in a banana and blueberry smoothie and it worked well.
It worked so well in aiding muscular strength and recovery, I’ve got the beginning of a bicep. That could, of course, just be the effects of doing body pump every other day during January. Who knows – body pump, or magic cherries?
If you’d like to buy some CherryActive Concentrate, you can order it online from the link above, or from Holland & Barrett.
After drinking this morning’s smoothie, I went to the gym. My Monday mornings are usually reserved for hangovers and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the inside of the gym on a Monday morning before but because I haven’t had a drink for a few weeks (don’t worry, I haven’t gone tee-total or doing that stupid ‘I’m-an-alcoholic-please-sponsor-me’ dryathlon thing; I’ve just had other things to do and find hangovers not particularly conducive to a) getting out of bed for long bike rides; or b) getting assignments done on time), I was up bright and early and raring to go(ish).
The gym was flipping packed. I’ve never seen it so busy. All three treadmills were in use, as were both rowing machines, so I had to start my workout on the cross-trainer (my usual routine is rowing machine, then the cross-trainer and I was mightily miffed at having to do them back to front). When I’d finished on the cross-trainer though, the rowing machines were still being used. I tried standing there staring at the people on them but that didn’t work so I got on the stationary bike and kept turning round to see if the rowing machines had become free and after five minutes, yay, one became empty so I got off the stationary bike and did some rowing.
Oh and by the way, today is Penguin Awareness Day, so here’s a baby penguin for you.
