Andrew is getting fit

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I did a hill workout today.  10 km in 56 minutes on the treadmill.  The only thing that I found interesting about the workout was how routine 10 km has become.  In the past a 10K run was a HUGE thing.  But now it’s becoming routine.  I find myself feeling a bit ambivalent about that.  On the one hand I’m quite impressed with myself and on the other hand it’s a little sad that I’ve lost the thrill of being able to do a 10K. Oh well, that’s the price of progress I guess.

Having said that, the thrill of actually being in training for a half marathon is immense!  I guess once I complete that I’ll have to settle for the thrill of training for a marathon!

I’ve hurt my arm (getting up from my desk of all things) so I’m off to see the physio later today.  This means I haven’t restarted the pushup challenge as whenever I extend my arm I get a stabbing pain in my wrist.  I suspect it will get better with rest but the physio is free (workplace will pay) so I might as well go.

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Tags: fitness by AndrewE
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This is a photo essay so click more only if you are brave! [Read more →]

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Tags: running by AndrewE
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Today I ran an 8 mile race.  Crowd support was non existent.  Drink stations were unmanned.  And I felt great.

Nancy over at Notes of a Non-Runner organised a virtual event in which runners all over the world ran 8 miles on the 8th day of the 8th month in 2008.

For some reason I entered the ‘hilly with very strong winds’ course.  It was hilly as I was checking out some quick routes for the volcano challenge so I ran around two of the other volcanoes in the challenge.  Earlier in the week I checked out the other 3.

I started off at work and walked up to the Auckland Domain to warm up.  I then headed out towards Mt Eden and ran up (uphill into the wind!) to check out an alternative route up to the top.  After that I headed out towards One Tree Hill and ran around it.  Conditions weren’t really great for running as the wind was very strong but I enjoyed it nevertheless.  After One Tree Hill I ran home and funnily enough I hit 8 miles as I turned into my street.  I’d mapped it out on g-maps beforehand and had gotten 8.4 which I thought would be enough (I wanted a little margin as I’d have hated to come up short).

I was listening to another great podcast by Steve Runner and one of the points he made was how great the online running community is and I have to agree.  These virtual events really help you to feel connected and that you are part of something bigger.  It was great.

I’m going to be cheeky and claim provisional 1st place for this event as I live in New Zealand and we are GMT +12 which means that I probably completed the event before it was even the 8th in the rest of the world.  Of course my time won’t be fastest but hey, since when was time important!  Speaking of which, 8 miles in 1:17:23.

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Tags: running by AndrewE
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I started week 05 of the 100 pushups challenge yesterday.  Week 05 is a bit of a massive jump up from week 04.  For day 01 I was required to do 40, 32, 30, 25 and a max set (min 40).  Well I managed the first 40 but that was the only ray of sunshine in this workout.  I did another 20, then another ten then though Bugger this and went off to do my run.  I did a comfortable 5K in about 26 minutes.

Today I wanted to do another 5K run as I’m planning on doing 8 on the 8th tomorrow.  However, I was reading a post by David over at Running because I can where he was talking about running a mile as fast as you can and then I read another post that directed me to Jeff Galloway’s Race Prediction Calculator.  (Apologies to whomever it was.  I just can’t remember.  Leave me a comment and I’ll link to you.) This calculator predicts your HM time based on how fast you can run a mile.

Anyways, as you probably guessed by now I decided to see how fast I could run a mile today.  I did a kilometer at 10 minutes a mile pace just to warm up then I ran as fast as I could for a mile.  I did it in 6:45 which is faster than I thought I could do.  Now I only need to knock off 2:45 and I’ll be seriously fast!

When I plug my time into Jeff Galloway’s Race Prediction Calculator that predicts a half marathon time of 1:46:07 which I personally think is rather unrealistic.  That’s an 8:06 min/mile pace and I’m not too sure I could maintain that.   Just for comparison purposes I also plugged my time into the McMillan running calculator and it gives me 1:48:05.  So maybe a sub 2 hour half is not that far fetched.  Food for thought anyway.

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Tags: Interesting, running by AndrewE
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As you can tell from my post title it is still raining here in Auckland.  We’ve had 2 storm fronts hit us over the last week and the weather has not been particularly conducive to running outside.  As such, I’ve been making good use of my gym membership and breaking the 20 minute time limits on the treadmills.

I did a nice and easy 5K yesterday and today I did a fartlek(excuse me!) session.  One of my running goals is to do a 20 minute 5K.  It’s a tall ask but why not?  So today I thought I would see what it felt like to run at 20 minute 5K pace (15km per hour).  I did 400m at 11.3 kph then 100m at 15kph and so on until I got to 5K at about 25ish minutes.  15kph is fast!  But, I managed to run 1 km of my 5km at that pace (not continuously mind you) so that’s not too bad.  I won’t be doing this every run but my Tuesday run is going to be a fartlek run from now on I’ve decided.

I completed week 04 day 02 of the 100 pushups program yesterday as well and hope to complete week 04 tomorrow.  I did 27, 21, 21, 18 and 25 (min 25) so only the bare minimum this time.  Still another day down.

I also completed week 01 of the Essential Abs program.

Week 02 is as follows:

Reverse Crunch
Crossover
Crunch: feet first
Opposite arm/leg raise

Workout #1 - 16 reps of each exercise
Workout #2 - 17 reps of each exercise
Workout #3 - 18 reps of each exercise

I’ve realised I have very weak abs indeed!  So hopefully this program will help with that.  I’ve got a few of my friends doing this as well which is great.

Also, my wife has run for 30 minutes in a row!  Give her a round of applause ladies and gentlemen!  It’s funny but when the running bug bites it bites hard. ;)  She is working on a guest post but you can check out her blog if you are keen. *cough*Mizfit*cough*

P.S.  My work had a bakeoff competition today.  Nuff said.

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Tags: fitness by AndrewE
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The theme of this week’s Take it and Run Thursday over at the Runner’s Lounge is Look back, look ahead.

Looking back:

Six months ago I started C25K and then had this crazy idea that I would try and do a quarter marathon at the Auckland Marathon this year.  Wow, I’ve come a long way since then.  I’ve run in 5 5K races and 1 10K race.  And I’ve decided to do the half marathon instead!  I’ve discovered a love for running that I never would have dreamed of earlier this year.

I’ve also lost 25 kgs (55 pounds) over the last 6 months and I owe a lot of that to my getting fit focus.

Honestly, I’ve exceeded all expectations I had.  I’m fitter than I’ve ever been.  I’m lighter than I’ve been since I was a teenager. It’s definitely a miracle! And lest I forget I can do more pushups than ever before!

Looking ahead:

Am I satisfied?  Part of me is but a larger part of me wants to strive for more.

My running goal for this year is to do as well as I can at my first half marathon. For next year? I’d love to do a marathon.

Weightloss:  I’d like to lose about another 7 kgs (15 pounds) and hopefully that will help me get a bit faster!

I’d also like to be able to do 100 pushups in a row!

I think this whole experience has also given me a new perspective on life in many respects.  I’ve realised I can do whatever I want and that has opened up whole new vistas of opportunity for me.

Thanks everyone for your support along my journey.  You guys rock!

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Tags: Life, running by AndrewE
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The bad weather has continued here in sunny Auckland so I did my 10K run in the gym today.

Instead of listening to music I listened to a Phedippidations podcast.  You can find them here. It was about how we are designed to run without shoes and that wearing shoes actually damages our feet.  That may be so but I think I’ll stick to my shoes for now.  I think the podcast is actually better than music as you have to focus more so the tedium of the treadmill is not quite as oppressive.

I did a few fartlek sessions where I sped up quite considerably for 200m then slowed back down for 200m and so forth.  Hopefully that helps to build a bit of speed stamina.

My wife has become addicted to running as well. It’s been really nice running with her while she does her C25K sessions.  She did her run in the gym this morning after her exercise circuit which was rather amazing to me as she is normally absolutely buggered after that.  She must have been really keen to run today.  Visit her site and cheer her on!  And yes, she is working on a guest post to give her perspective on my fitness quest.

Sheamus has a competition going on at the moment at his site.  He has an aim of running for 365 days straight and he’s doing pretty well so far! He’s just set a new personal best for the 5K so go along and cheer him on!

UPDATE: The lovely Marshmallow has helped me solve the disappearing comments situation.  I think it’s fixed now.  My openid plugin was sending comments into the ether so it’s been deleted.

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Tags: C25K, running by AndrewE
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We’ve had really bad weather over the last few days so I haven’t been able to run outside for a while.  So this morning when I got up and couldn’t hear the sound of rain I decided to be optimistic and pack my garmin with my gym gear.

I had  a 8 am class to teach so I couldn’t go to the gym bright but I was optimistic of getting a run in outside after class as the weather looked promising.  And what do you know - I got out of class at 9 and it was raining again!  Not to be deterred I headed off to the gym and by the time I got there the rain had stopped so I thought why not? and headed outside.

It was a glorious run.  There were very black rain clouds looming the whole time but they never managed to make it to where I was running so I had a nice sunny run.  The first in a while!

I bumped into one of my students who was taking photos (for a digital media assignment) and he snapped one of me. I’m hoping to get a copy so that I can put it up here to share.

I did a nice 12km loop of the city and harbourside in 1:10:09 for an average pace of 5:47 per km.  I felt great afterwards.  The satellite link doesn’t want to work so no pretty map today.  Only a streetmap.

Then this evening I went for a run with my wife who is doing C25K week 06 day 01. We went down to Mission Bay and had a great run walk. We ran another 3.5 km in that so I’ve done about 15.5 km today which is quite nice.

I actually broke the 500 km mark today as well. Not bad for someone who only took up running in late January.

As for my weigh-in this week:
I had a slight gain in weight this week. I can blame this on just eating too much. My exercise has been good but I tend to get the munchies when I’m a bit sick and I definitely got the munchies. Having said that, I’m back on the straight and narrow now.

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Tags: fitness by AndrewE
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I had a great little run yesterday evening.  My wife has been doing C25K in the gym but has started doing her runs in the evening outside instead.  This is because she has signed up to a fitness class through work and it’s on first thing in the morning (in her previous running time).  This has been brilliant as I’ve been getting to run with my beloved wife and it has been really nice so far.  Conditions were cold but perfect last night and we did a nice gentle 4 km walkrunwalkrunwalkrunwalk.

One of the very rewarding side effects of my decision to get fit and active has been seeing the effect I’ve had on people around me.  Quite a few of my friends and family are now pursuing healthy activites and eating better and it’s really nice when they tell me that my progress has inspired them to take action.

So that was the good run.

I did another run today.  I was aiming for about 10km but I ended up doing just over 11.  Having said that there was a fair patch of walking in there as my daughter’s stomach bug (oh, did I fail to mention that my poor little monkey has been chucking like a banshee) hit me during my run.  Let’s just say it was not my finest run and leave it there.

11 km in 1:14:37.

I also managed to do day 02 of week 03 of the 100 pushups program.  I did 27,19,19,15 and 30 (25 required).    That’s definitely the most pushups I’ve ever done in my life.

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Tags: C25K, running by AndrewE
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I’ve noticed that my blog seems to have become a running and push-ups blog. That’s fine by me as it reflects my next lesson learned.

I’ve found that I HAVE to exercise to lose weight and get healthy. Some people may find that for them they can control what they eat and be in tip top shape but that just doesn’t work for me. I need to run and do my pushups. I need to go to the gym and try and lift weights every so often. I need to get on the crosstrainer, the rowing machine, my bike etc. I need to be active!

• Exercise has many beneficial effects for me. It makes me feel good about myself. There is a certain sense of smugness that sets in as I pass people sitting in their cars or cafes as I’m out running.
• It helps to keep me healthy. My cholesterol has dropped dramatically since I started exercising and eating right.  My weight has dropped dramatically.  103 pounds down so far!
• It means I can eat more of finer things in life (hmm…curly fries) as I’m burning more calories.  By exercising I’ve built more muscles so I’m burning more calories while I’m just doing my everyday activities!
• Exercise has transformed me from a couch potato into a runner.

Honestly folks, if I can do it then anyone can.  I think the mistake some folks make is that they try to do too much at once.  If you are just starting out you need to ease into it.  Take it one day at a time.  Before too long you’ll be one of us happy nutters who are out running in the rain!

And so, back to pushups and running:
I did day 02 of week 02 the 100 pushup challenge this morning in the gym.  The schedule called for 16, 13, 11, 11 and max (min 15).  I did the first 16 surprisingly easy although I could feel my abs (or lack thereof) quite strongly.  The next 13, 11 and 11 went well as well.  In my previous pushup post I said that I would definitely do more than the minimum and so I told myself I had to do at least 20 and I did 20.  I’m pretty sure that at least 50% of the pushup challenge is mental so from now on I’ll try and set more ambitious goals!

I also had a good run this morning.  I ran for an hour and did 10.3 km at a 5:50 pace.

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Tags: Lessons, fitness, running by AndrewE
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