Session #18

Another great workout this morning with Carla. (Legs!)

(Interesting and good new way to use the hip abduction machine, which otherwise I always find a bit easy. Do 3 x 60 with each 60 as 3 x 20, with no rest between, starting on a heavier weight and moving down to a lighter on each successive 20; but do it sitting straight upright, not leaning against the back rest, and with arms folded in front of the chest rather than on side handles. Much harder!)

I'll have my last two appointments with her on Tuesday and Wednesday next week, as Monday's a holiday. I don't need to be at the airport for my flight back to New York until the afternoon.

Wednesday treadmill run

Only stuck it out for 40 mins., even walking 1 min. out of every ten for water and cooling purposes!

3.5 warm arduous treadmill miles

Session #17

Great session with Carla this morning, the kind I most enjoy: strenuous and yet sedate (lots of fairly heavy weights, no plyometrics!).

1hr. strength

Short Monday run

Enough to shake out the cobwebs...

c. 3.25 miles, c. 35 mins.

Xmas run

I dallied abed a little longer than I should have, and am now really a bit delinquent in terms of moving on to the next stage of the day - but I began the morning with a really lovely hour-long run. I am in Tampa, people in Florida may complain that it's too cold but it's perfect running weather, sunny and in the low 60s!

(Twenty years ago this area must have been still truly bucolic, it's too developed now to really deserve that word but it's still rather beautiful in patches - I ran on a pedestrian path along Gulf Boulevard, which hugs what I am fairly certain is the Intracoastal Waterway. Very quiet, lots of sea birds and that good feeling of being close to the water...)

1.0hr., 5.64 miles, avg. pace 10:38, avg. HR 153, max. HR 164

Lovely!

Thursday treadmill

Run-walk intervals, very good really (or at any rate strenuous and warm!); I felt initial self-reproach at having to lower the 'run' speed from 6.5 to 6.0, but then remembered that the last time I was doing intervals it was just a ladder of 1-2-3 and back down again, so no surprise that 6.5 felt a bit fast. If I am patient, I will be a lot faster in a couple of months...

Anyway:

10 mins. warmup jog, then 10 x (3 mins. run @6.0mph, 2 mins. walk @3.2mph)

60 mins. total

Session #16

Excellent session with Carla; I'm glad we were able to fit this one in before weekend travels. I'll see her on Tuesday and Thursday next week, as she's taking Monday off.

1hr. strength

Session #15

Laziness overcame me yesterday; I couldn't do the projected treadmill run because I'd forgotten to bring my asthma inhaler with me, and then I thought I might swim in the early evening but in fact the charms of steak night at Fidel Murphy's in Brent's company got the better of my good intentions...

(The weather's warmer again, making running outside a bit trickier to manage.)

A fantastic workout this morning with Carla, though. I'll see her tomorrow too, as Friday's a travel day. I think I should have time for a short run first thing Friday morning, and am definitely planning on taking advantage of relatively cool Tampa temperatures to get in a good run on Saturday morning - in fact if I set out by seven or so, I could probably run a full two hours, which would be delightful...

Session #14

Fantastic session with Carla. This has been very good for my morale as well as my fitness - working out with a good trainer is extremely enjoyable!

1hr. strength

Short Sunday spin

I know I need to do MANY hours rather than just ONE hour, but it is not yet happening!

(I put out all my things last night for a notional long bike ride, and woke up just before the alarm went off at 6 - only to decide that I was MUCH too lazy to get up and go out for a bike ride! And while I'm in Cayman, Sunday very early morning is really the only safe time for riding - the people who go out on weekdays go at 4:30am to avoid traffic, that is much too early for me...)

1hr. easy spin (zone 1)

(Belated session #13)

Hmmm, I guess I forgot to blog it yesterday morning? Lunge muscles certainly very sore today!

1hr. strength

Saturday long run

Did it on the treadmill; had contemplated possibility of trying for 2 hours, but really it was clear that 90 minutes would be more than enough! In fact my longest run last weekend was 70 minutes, so this is about right in terms of sensible build-up.

(Making a mental note, too, not to wear those orange socks for treadmill runs - they are worn thin on the soles, I get blisters on the underneath part of my toes!)

1.5hr. warm slow treadmill run

Easy Thursday bike

Brent was suggesting the other day that as my ride at IMCd'A, assuming things really do come together for that race, will be mostly zone 1 with stretches of zone 2/3 as I climb hills, the two things I really should be doing sooner rather than later are (1) hill interval training and (2) lots of zone 1 riding, to try and activate the dreaded slowtwitch muscle of which I have naught.

I have had many good intentions over the last month or two about getting on the spin bike and reading a book on my Kindle, but have somehow not actually gotten around to doing it; this afternoon, the time had come...

After several months of not riding at all, I have to say that the saddle on the spin bike seems insanely uncomfortable! I got off after 1 hour only, which is fairly feeble given that I was riding in zone 1. But one must start somewhere, I will try and do 2 hours in the afternoon tomorrow, and have a real outdoor ride on Sunday morning.

1hr., avg HR 119, max HR 132 (zone 1)

I am less confident about cycling HR zones than about running ones, but I am using these numbers for cycling:

Zone 1 (recovery): 105-129
Zone 2 (aerobic): 130-143
Zone 3 (tempo): 144-148
Zone 4 (sub-threshold): 149-159
Zone 5a (super-threshold): 160-163
Zone 5b (aerobic capacity): 164-169
Zone 5c (anaerobic capacity): 170-175

I would think for a two-hour easy ride, I should be aiming to hit the first hour in the top of the 120s and move into the 130s for most of the second hour.

Thursday run

A nice one, though shortish - there is a natural turning-around point at what the Garmin tells me is exactly the 2-mile mark, where the sidewalk temporarily stops at the entrance to the public beach, and I decided to turn back there.

(I need to start doing long easyish trainer rides a couple afternoons a week, and it occurs to me that it might be more likely I'd done one of those later in the day if I didn't do quite so much first thing in the morning!)

There is an amazing phenomenon in Cayman, I have learned, with the rather lovely name of Christmas breeze. Usually it is what can only be described as too darn hot for me here, but a cold front often moves in in December. It is good! (Check out the last paragraph of that article, though, which is from last year: "The cold front will also bring cooler temperatures. Saturday’s high is only expected to reach 81°F (27°C) and Sunday’s low is expected to dip to 72°F (22°C)" !!!!!!! As a cool-weather person, I am astounded by this perspective on weather in the low 70s!)

Knees much less sore than the other day; maybe I'm getting acclimated? (Also yesterday at the gym was more focused on shoulders, arms, back - I guess that makes a difference.)

I'll do my long run Saturday morning on the treadmill at the gym, and perhaps a short early-evening run on Sunday; I think 4 runs/week is preferable to 3 just now, especially as I don't seem to be swimming.

45:05, 4.03mi., avg pace 11:11, avg HR 155

Session #12

Excellent. Triceps for the last part of the hour: afterwards I could hardly get my arms above my head to wash my hair!...

1hr. strength

Tuesday run

A nice little run - I should have done it yesterday evening, but I was overcome with weariness and laziness! It's a bit too sunny out there if I don't go out till 7:30am, which is the earliest time that's really realistic for me, so I think I will prefer to stick with the evening slot when it's possible, but it's good to have this as a backup in the case of failures of will.

I ran steady, taking short (c. 30 second?) unscheduled walk breaks whenever I needed a few mouthfuls of water from the Camelbak or just to bump my heart rate down a notch.

1:00, 5.32 miles, avg. pace 11:17 (no point giving HR data as the first 20 mins. or so I was getting implausibly high numbers!)

Knees quite sore - it is bad, this business of very slow running on concrete, it will be better once I'm going a bit faster again. I'll do my long run this week on the treadmill rather than outside - the water supply issues are too bothersome for anything much over an hour.

Session #11

It is good - now I just have to start eating more healthily and scantily...

1hr. strength, .5hr. walk

Saturday run

OK, that was good. Still on the 5-2 run-walk intervals, but feeling much less physically overwhelmed by the sensations of running; I suppose it is desensitization rather than fitness as such.

5.69mi., 1:08:52, avg pace 12:06, avg HR 150, max HR 163

Session #10

Fantastic session with Carla. This is good!

Thursday run

OK, that was good, a steady week of exercise has earned me a little bit of fitness (might have been a tad cooler this evening, too, which always helps). Still doing run-walk intervals (5 mins. jog, 2 mins. walk), but felt the possibility of steady running seemed no longer quite so remote...

5.11 miles, 1:00:34, avg pace 11:50, avg HR 154, max HR 167

Session #9

Fantastically good session with Carla this morning; on Monday we did some serious strength stuff, today was more boot-camp style. Both are very good, I am sure it makes sense to mix it up like that, but on the whole I find the boot-camp more challenging, it comes less easily to me and I have to work harder and while that is slightly horrible it is also excellent!

Monday 'run'

The weather was beautiful, but I was nonetheless very warm! Alas, running more like an elephant than like a gazelle - I did pretty much the same thing I did the other day.

6 x (5 mins. jog, 2 mins. walk)

3.51 milese, 42:31, avg. pace 12:07, avg HR 153, max HR 167

Session #8

A great training session this morning with Carla - my muscles are going to be sore tomorrow...

Bonus link: Coach Troy's Ironman marathon tips. I have loved the Spinervals discs for years now, and I've been following his blog more recently with considerable pleasure.

Sea swim!

Ah, that was lovely - it is best at this time of year, the water is too warm in the summer months! Saw a very handsome ray and lots of fish. 25 minutes only, but if I do an hour on the trainer later it will have been a swim-bike-run weekend and I will be thoroughly triaspirational again...

(I was thinking about a bike ride this morning, but it's the day of the Cayman marathon and Brent thought there would probably be detour/traffic issues; and in the end, I couldn't go to sleep till after 1:30 anyway, so early rising for bike-riding was contraindicated...)

Outdoor run!

Ah, it is such a relief, really running is my favorite sport...

I still overheated, because I'm unfit and because I run hot even at the best of times, but for Cayman it's a blissfully cool evening: 74 degrees F, only (!) 62% humidity.

6 x (5 mins. jog, 2 mins. walk): 3.5 miles, 42:11, avg. pace 12:04, avg HR 152, max HR 167

(I'm in zone 4 for most of the time I'm actually running, but I just can't stand to stay in zone 2 when I run here, it is so slow it is not even a run any more - the walk-run intervals are much preferable!)

Session #7

Very happy to be back in the gym with Carla. Lungs were better than I expected (some coughing, not bad though), but overall fatigue was overwhelming - I felt queasy whenever I did anything more high-intensity in terms of cardiovascular demands, and we called it short at 45 minutes as I was really ready to stop! I was not at all sure I was going to be able to walk home without taking a rest - it may be underfueling, too, though I did have half a Clif builder's bar for breakfast, so that should have been OK.

Anyway we're back on track now, I think: I'll see her Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8am for the rest of the month, and she's not going away over Xmas, so that's good, though the gym is of course closed over the two holiday weekends...

45 mins. strength
30 mins. walk

Back in the world

After three-plus weeks of being too sick to exercise, it is a HUGE relief to me to be back in the gym! Didn't do a ton today, I am going to be cautious re: lungs, but it was good...

Treadmill walk-run:

10 mins. warmup at 5mph, then 1-1-2-2-3-3--3-3-2-2-1-1 alternating 6.5mph run, 3mph recovery (3 miles, 36 mins.)

10 mins. core