Day 4 Starting to feel the strain

Today's run: Evening - Long(er), slow(er) and steady - pavement - 8.12km - 42.33mins

First off I must say I am loving this runstreak at the moment! Although I am only just starting off I am really enjoying the continued focus of running everyday and it is having a great affect on my running and I am probably enjoying my running as much if not moret han ever!

Today's run I was expecting to be tough after yesterdays morning run and evening boot camp session but in actual fact it wasn't too bad at all. 

Although I felt a bit stiff this morning I felt I had recovered well from yesterdays exertions. The double session yesterday definitely made me feel the strain, the early morning run was a drain having to run so early in the morning and my energy for the evening boot camp session was pretty drained. 

Boot camp last night consisted of a lot of skipping, I am not a great fan nor actually a great skipper. Although it is a great cardio exercise I unfortunately do not possess the right levels of coordination for it to be a particularly effective exercise and I tend to usually both look and feel like a hyperactive spider in a constant state of half running, half falling in a perpetual cycle of almost tripping over all of his legs. 

The main circuits of last nights training was a split circuit of two sections, firstly using an exercise step, 30 seconds of tappers, bomb jumps and side lunges (all leg intensive exercises designed to build dynamic power) followed by alternate skipping sets repeated 4 times. The second circuit was then again using the exercise step this time a combination of 30 seconds of incline pressups, tricep dips and decline pressups again intersected with skipping and again repeated 4 times. 

So all in all 8 sections of skipping! I was sick of holding the damn skipping rope come the end!

My energy levels particularly in my legs were clearly diminished on my usual performance and I could feel my legs at times just not having anything left to give. I know its all good as pushing tired legs to keep going when they have had enough will only make them stronger. 

I started off aiming to progress slow and steadily but soon warmed up nicely and felt stronger as the run went on. 

My route was planned to take me around 7 or 8km and in the end I completed 8.12km with a decent pace of just over 5 minutes per km with a strong and fast finish.

As well as the obvious physical challenges running for so many consecutive days posses there are also the more practical implications such as needing a high amount of kit.

Earlier this week I was forced into doing an emergency batch of washing made up almost entirely of running socks! Almost 50 socks all washed and ready to wear most of which to be fair have seen better days!

So thats day 4 done and I am already feeling the benefits of my more intense training as I feel stronger, faster and fitter.

Some quality miles

Tonight's workout focusing on some 'quality' miles.

I headed out for a 4km run hitting it pretty hard at probably 80% intensity and covered it in just under 19 minutes feeling good which I was pleased with.

Then at a local park I covered around 1km by doing 100m sprints again at around 80% followed by 100m recovery jogs.

To finish I did 3 leg circuits of star jumps, squats, calf raises, lunges and tuck jumps as illustrated on the picture below.

The view from the park was pretty inspiring with the church spire popping up over the tree line, to the other side of me the clouds changing colour as the sun sets.

                                    

Thanks for reading and I hope you are managing to enjoy the last of the summer by getting outside and enjoying the great outdoors. 

Training round up for my second marathon

Two weeks after my marathon and now six weeks until my next one I have been working hard to hit the next race harder and faster!

My training in the last two weeks has included a lot more strength training and circuit training in my attempts to be even fitter and stronger.

Heres a leg circuit I have done a couple of times recently to work on strengthening my legs: 

I have also done a bit more gym work including more weights and mixing up ab exercises, upper body work and some leg exercises into circuit routines.

The main exercises I have been focusing on are press ups, squats, lunges, crunches and leg raises.

Over the last fortnight a main focus has been on building up my press up capabilities as this has been something I have let slide recently. So on top of my training I completed a press up streak of 100 press ups on seven consecutive days, a pretty good achievement for me and I feel so much stronger from it already. 

Diet wise things have slipped a bit as I have enjoyed not watching what I have been eating so carefully.

A few foodporn highlights from the week include :

An awesome ham and BBQ pizza

A delicious strawberry and banana smoothie

And my epic post run Sunday brunch breakfast wrap last weekend

Today's run

Today was my first longer run since the marathon as I completed 27.5km on a route out along the London Loop to Purfleet. This is a route I have been very keen to run as this was the route I had planned to run a few weeks before the marathon but had to abandon after 2kms due to my foot injury striking.

My route took me through my usual course through the Ingrebourne valley country park but further out to Rainham village, over the train tracks, through Rainham marshes following the London Loop trail all the way out onto the Thames. 

These pictures are the view from when I came out onto the river, firstly looking East out towards the Thames estuary, if my camera was better you would make out the Dartford crossing. 

The second photo is then looking West towards the City, again if the photo was better quality you could make out the skyscrapers in the far distance.

Unfortunately I had picked a poor day for this run as it was very overcast and cloudy not to mention windy and battling the wind coming off the river was challenging to say the least!

A few highlight along the route include the sculpture of the diver in the photo below which is supposedly the only sculpture actually in the Thames. 

My personal highlight though is the concrete barges which were used as part of the D Day landing in World War ii, they inspire and fascinate me every time I see them and I continue to be perplexed by the lack of interest and information available on them and the lack of recognition they receive. 

My half way turnaround point was the RSPB bird sanctuary at Purfleet which is the base for bird watchers on the Rainham marshes and an excellent provider of refreshments and tasty cakes. Not today unfortunately as today I only had time for a quick toilet break before turning around and heading home. 

After 2 and three quarter hours and over 27 kilometers I was pretty knackered and was in need of some refuel nutritional sustenance which I consumed in the form of a tortilla wrap with peanut butter, jam and banana, delicious!

As always thanks for reading and I welcome any comments, feedback and suggestions, thanks!

I am now on bloglovin as well, its great way to keep up with your favourite blogs, well worth a look if you haven't already checked it out. 

Running off my Easter chocolate

Easter weekend; 4 days off work and lots of chocolate.  

I started out the weekend by thinking I could do some kind of experiment into how many calories I burned off from exercise over the weekend in comparison  to the amount of calories I consumed from chocolate over the weekend and see how that worked out.

However upon realising that a cadburys creme egg has 180 calories I quickly realised I was going to need to be running sone serious miles every day to work off all my calories from chocolate especially when I had 6 creme eggs on friday morning in addition to other chocolate.

So not wanting to depress myself by counting all my chocolate calories I abandoned this idea and just concentrated on getting some good training done instead.

Good Friday

So friday I did a 45 minute circuit training session in the park including jogging to warm up, skipping, press ups, planks, tricep dips, kick throughs and body weight resistance machines.

Saturday

Saturday I had decided to make my return to my local parkrun. I thought this would be a good way of incorporating some speed work into my training as well as getting a sense of how I compared to my times last year.

I gave the race a good go and pushed it pretty hard and although my legs felt string my lungs struggled which I think fairly represented my recent training of boot camps but not a lot of running.

I was really pleasantly surprised with my time of 22.12 as I was aiming to go under 24 minutes and would have been very satisfied with that. 

I was even more surprised when I later realised this time was my second fastest out of the 7 times I have completed parkrun.

I know 7 times isn't a massive amount of runs but I have always pushed for a PB at parkrun and never just turned up with the aim of getting round so my times are all competitive. 

I also did a jog/walk there and back so covered an extra 6K in addition to the 5K parkrun.

Sunday

Again I headed over to the park for some circuit training this time mixing up skipping and star jumps with body weight resistance. I was all set for a long session when the heavens opened and my session got rather washed out so I headed home and did a mixture of legs and upperbody exercises. 

Sunday afternoon I also cooked up my own lamb kofta meal with cucumber&mint yogurt and my own cous cous.

Monday

This is the day my training for my 3 marathons in 3 month challenge really offically started. (See previous post http://idratherbeoutrunning.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/3-marathons-in-3-months-pre-30-challenge.html?m=1 for details)

I headed out early doors for a there and back route to Ingrebourne hill about 12km.

It was the most beautiful sunny morning for a run and although I found it quite hard going I thoroughly enjoyed the run, the weather and the scenery. 

Its the first time I have done that kind of distance since my half marathon in early march other than my commute run home which is a different league as running through the city is so stop/start with all the traffic and much slower paced because of carrying my rucksack. 

I am somewhere off my best pace as I conpleted 12.5K in 1 hour 8 minutes when prior to the half marathon I was almost clearing 13K in under an hour.

I am not too fussed though as my big focus for my training for my upcoming marathons is to run more at a slower marathon pace rather than at threshold or sprint pace.

The weekend was finished off with a delicious turkish meal out. Lamb Iksender  awesome!

Back up and running

After 20 days without being able to run I managed to get out for a 5K yesterday.

I was starting to get worried about writing a blog about a third runless weekend and was concerned that despite my best intentions to write a running blog that covered some food pictures the blog was turning into a complete foodporn website due to my inability to be able to run. 

So back to running, on Friday I felt that my groin was feeling strong enough to try out a bit of running so I incorporated a run of a couple of hundred metres into my circuit training over the park. 

In all I completed 3 circuits of 1 minute sets of star jumps, squats, knee highs, calf raises & rocket jumps followed by a little run. I then rounded this off with 3 circuits of press ups, dips and some sets on the upper body gym equipment in the park. 

Having no problem with this run I ventured out for a 5K on Saturday morning and managed it fairly easy at 5minute/km pace. I was just so happy to be able to get out and run again and relieved to be able to write about some running on the blog at last, so hears to more running and running related blogging!