Fun Run

Update Feb 1st 2012

2012-02-01T03:48:00.000-08:00

The run programs for 2012 have been released for the winter season:

April
1st Cross Country 6 km
15th Cross Country 6 km
28th Point Cartwright 5 km
29th Cross Country 6 km

May
20th Cross Country 6 km
26th Point Cartwright 5 km

June
3rd Cross Country 6 km
17th Cross Country 6 km
30th Point Cartwright 5 km

July
15th Jetty 2 Jetty 5 km
28th Point Cartwright 5 km

August
25th Point Cartwright 5 km

Cross Country http://sccrosscountry.org/venues.html
Point Cartwright http://www.team-ascent.com.au/ (web site yet to be updated)
Jetty 2 Jetty http://www.j2j.com.au/

Training is going ok and I hope to run in all of them but maybe not in April 29th cross country because it is just the day after the Point Cartwright run.

Running these distances is not a problem, I have run longer at least on the treadmill at the gym, the problem will be whether or not my calf muscles are ok on the day.

Micheal will be doing the cross country and probably Point Cartwright and j2j. The cross country was Micheal's idea, I didn't know about them until he told me, they sound like fun so they have been added to the list.

So it is 8 weeks to the first run.

Update January 2012

2012-01-01T17:07:00.000-08:00

I will remember 2011 as the year I started to train for fun runs. Also the year I damaged my achilles and calf muscles a couple of times while training. Ok, that taught me to take it easy and build slowly and strengthen all my leg muscles to prepare.

I found good information on the net at http://www.brooksrunning.com.au/runner_resource.php and
http://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/
Lots of information is on the net, just google the words 'fun run training'

I also talked to a physiotherapist and staff at the gym. I now have a series of exercises I do daily to keep my legs fit for running.

Fun runs start in about April on the Sunshine Coast Point Cartwright and I am hoping to take part in all 5.

I also aim to do the Jetty 2 Jetty at Redcliffe, maybe the 10k course but will see, if not then it will be the 5k course.

Training continues, nearly all of it at the gym and includes RPM, rowing machine, weights and the treadmill. 2011 ended with a 5k run on the treadmill Friday afternoon and I hope to continue this into 2012 each week plus some 1k and 2k sessions.

Update November 2011

2011-11-29T03:18:00.000-08:00

Ok, no posts for a while mainly because I was not running due to various sore muscles. But I can resume now even though the muscles still have problems. You see I was doing a 10k training run on the road then kaboom, a rather painful cramp in my right calf muscle. This was about 2 weeks ago and I am still getting over it, maybe something broke.

However I am still in the gym mainly running on the treadmills followed by RPM then followed with 2000k on the rowing machines. I am not sure what week this is I will have to work it out or maybe not.

By the way I have now got Photoshop CS5.1 and am working on more textures (www.oztextures.com)

End of week 18

2011-09-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

Not much to report. Again I had the flu all week and no car so I didn't do much. Unfortunately I missed the run at Mooloolaba, but there will be others.

End of week 17

2011-09-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

Ran about 16ks this week. There was some pain in my achilles but I found if I stopped a minute and masaged them I can resume running. Feel like I have lots of energy.

A 5k run at Mooloolaba is coming up in 2 weeks. I will run it to see what the course is like. Next year I will run the winter series of runs over that course www.team-ascent.com.au.

I have added into training running a series of 1k runs but each time faster using the treadmil to set the pace, I used 8, 8.5, 9, 9.5 as settings the first time.

End of week 16

2011-09-05T05:13:00.000-07:00

Doing more running now as well as continuing the stretch exercises. It looks like my calf muscles and achilles are ok but I wait and see. I did a full 5k on the treadmil on Saturday without any pain. There is a 5k run at Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast in about 2 weeks. Each year they have a series of runs over the same course. This is the last in the series for this year. I want to do the full series next year so by doing this run I will get an idea what the course is like.

End of week 15

2011-08-30T16:56:00.000-07:00

Ok back into training. I ran a total of 9ks this week and had no pain. I feel like the problems are over but to make sure I will continue the stretching exercise and in fact increase their duration, It seems they are having the desired effect.

End of week 14

2011-08-23T04:44:00.000-07:00

Nothing to report this week except a dose of the flu and the week off with no training at all. I did however continue to do the stretching exercises.

End of week 13

2011-08-15T21:31:00.000-07:00

I continue to do the exercises to strenghten calf muscles and achilles. 2 runs this week. One at 1.25 ks. Then a few days later one at 2ks but with a half a k walk in between each k. At the end of the second K I again felt problems in my lower calf left leg, I stopped and massaged it, it was hard and a bit lumpy, after the massage it was ok and there has been no pain since. I continue to do rowing and RPM at the gym. There is a 5k run coming up in about 2 weeks but unfortunately my legs might not be fixed before then.

End of week 12

2011-08-09T05:29:00.000-07:00

Good signs. The soreness in calf muscles and achilles finally left. On Sunday, end of week, no pain.

I will spend the next week doing calf and achilles exercises before I try recommence running.

Although the previous posts have been calling a problem with my calf muscles I found out that a lot of the problem is with the achilles, particularly at the top of the achilles where it joins in with the calf muscles. And I was told that an achilles injury can be caused by stiff calf muscles, so now I can see the reason for calf and achilles exercising and stretching as part of the training routine.

End of week 11

2011-07-31T21:55:00.000-07:00

A short post to the diary.
Calf muscle problems have kept me away from running.
I can only wait till they are ok then get back into training.
I wait and see what the coming week brings.

End of week 10

2011-07-30T15:40:00.000-07:00

This was a recovery week. My calf muscles needed time to repair.

I had an appointment with a physiotherapist, I wanted some professional advice about fixing my calf muscle problem. I need to know what is going on and what I can do to fix things so I can continue running.

The lesson of the past two weeks is that yes my body had enough cardio conditioning to run but my leg muscles and tendons used when running distances needed more conditioning, they needed to be stretched and strengthened. So the coming weeks will mainly be used for exercising the right muscles.

The physio gave me a set of leg exercises designed to stretch and strengthen my calf muscles. Another two exercises treat the achilles tendon as well as the calf muscles.

I will add to these exercises another called the 'Walt Reynold's Special Achilles Strengthener' plus two more designed to stretch and strengthen the hamstring muscles.

These exercises are designed to give the muscles better endurance so I can run and they will still get a good blood supply and not tighten up or get damaged. All of these exercises can be done at home but I will once again take advantage of some specialised equipment and facilities they have at the gym.

I can see now that doing the right conditioning exercises is very important and it is something that I as a beginner had overlooked. I had committed two common faults, first trying to run too fast in training and second not using exercises to conditioning my body to distance running. As I run I learn and I found a lot of good information in these web pages:
http://www.over40runner.com/training/RunningForm/LongDistanceRunningForm.html
http://www.runningplanet.com/training/running-form.html

All training sessions whether gym, rpm, running or weights starts with stretching and strengthening exercises, either at the gym or at home before a road run. All of them end with a stretching and cool down exercises.

By the way this post was a bit late but still refers to week ten.

End of week 9

2011-07-17T03:21:00.000-07:00

The blog posts are moving to Sunday night so they will cover Monday to Sunday and hence include any runs that are held on Sundays.

An interesting week. I was getting a lot of pain in my calf muscles, I don't know why, maybe it's the shoes. I will shop for a better pair, ones that are made specifically for running.

As a result of the pain I only trained Tuesday.

Sunday was to be my very first fun run Jetty 2 jetty 5k starting and finishing at Woody Point, see www.j2j.com.au

I was hoping that by Sunday the pain would be gone,the good news is it was, well ... nearly.

I really wanted to do the 5k run and with the pain under control there I lined up with 1000 other runners at the start line.

I loved the run, but the problem was my left calf muscle started hurting badly within the first 100 meters and the right calf muscle started hurting at the half way mark.

There was no way I was going to stop, I kept running and crossed the finishi line in a respectable 30 minutes.

My goal now is to get to 25 minutes but I will need the legs to do it.

So in summary to get to the first 5k run it took 9 weeks training and I ran well over 80ks total, mainly on a treadmill at the gym, plus aver 400ks of bike riding again at the gym.

When the photos come online I will upload them.

End of week 8

2011-07-09T16:10:00.000-07:00

This week was interesting. On Monday I was running on the treadmill at the gym and something clicked/popped behind my knee and it hurt. I didn't try running again until all pain had completely gone, I didn't know how long that would take. It only took a few days and my leg felt fine again. By Friday I felt safe enough to try 5k on the road again, it was great. 5Ks on the road near home on what I call track 1, no pain, good strong finish. I am now confident that I will be able to run my first 5k Fun Run booked in for next weekend. I am hoping for a time 30 to 35 minutes which is not what you call fast but a comfortable speed.

End of week 7

2011-07-03T05:45:00.000-07:00

Scince the training started I have run over 50ks. It has all been in the gym. However this week I did run on the road, about 4k. I wanted to see if the hard road surface made my legs sore. The result was yes a little bit but nothing serious. I did find that it seems to take more effort to run on the road as opposed to a gym treadmill, more effort to propel myself forward. Also I did feel kind of heavy and I wonder if my weight 85kgs is a factor, perhaps 70 - 75 kgs is a better road running body weight. Maybe with all this running I might find out.

End of week 6

2011-06-25T17:56:00.000-07:00

In one of the training session I got to the 5k mark this week. That's good. Otherwise everything is proceeding as normal. The Saturday morning training session has turned into running, riding and rowing. For example this Saturday it was 5.25k running, 2k rowing, 10k riding. It was similar the week before but only 4.5k running. It is still all the work being done in the gym, I will stay there until I get the running fitness up higher before I go out on the roads. The good thing about workingout in the gym is that it is all measured, the distance, the time, the speed etc and that make it easier to see how the training is going.

End of week 5

2011-06-18T19:43:00.000-07:00

Sticking to the training. 3 times a week with 30 minutes each time. As I get more used to it I increase the time and speed a bit, so what started off as 4k is now 4.5k, and the speed is 8ks/hr and increasing to 8.1ks/hr half way through the run, so the time is a bit over 30 minutes. I keep this up to the end of week 7 then I speak to Josh again and get some new instructions.

End of week 4

2011-06-11T01:53:00.000-07:00

I have decided to make regular reports at the end of each training week. So this week, as it says in the previous blog, I am using a new long term training method designed to get my legs into running condition.

I trained Tuesday, Thursday and today Saturday doing 30 minutes at 8km per hour each time. So far there has been no sign of pain in my legs.

Training Week 4

2011-06-08T04:54:00.000-07:00

There will be a few changes. I went to run a 5k on Saturday and at 2.5 my calf muscle began to hurt. At 3k I had to stop because it was very sore. It was sore right through Sunday and into Monday morning.

I tried a 1k slow run on Monday before RPM and it was ok. I later spoke to Josh, a trainer at the gym and a triathelete and told him while he can run 21 ks I am still trying to get to 5k and asked if he could give me some advice.

Basically I had made the classic mistake of going to quick to fast and concentrating on distance instead of first training my leg muscles to get used to running.

He suggested a program to run 3 times a week on the machines at the gym at a slow spead about 8, that is less than 7 minutes per k. Run for 30 minutes. If there is any soreness stop running and walk instead. It doesn't matter about the distance just keep it going at a slow speed for 30 minutes. It is designed to get my leg muscles used to running without the soreness and muscle strain.

Then after 4 weeks I will go back to Josh and see where I go from there. He expects that with the proper traing methods I can get to 10k without too much drama. Michael who goes to the gym is also interested in doing the training program.

The 3 days will be Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday as well as continuing rowing machines and RPM.

I tried the first run on Tuesday and it worked wonderfully, I ran for half an hour at a speed of 8 and enjoyed it. One of the pleasures I had experienced before is just running, getting into a groove and just running, where distance and time doesn't matter.

Update 1st June 2011

2011-05-31T23:05:00.001-07:00

Intend to get to 5k 2 times per week maybe Tuesday and Saturdays. The longest distance I have run for training so far is 3k but I had to stop so I could go to the RPM class.

My legs don't hurt the next day after running now. They feel stronger and firmer.

Gear check: Target have the running clothes I will need. Checked shoes at Amart, there are shoes for running and shoes for cross training, the cross training means they have a wider sole and are a bit heavier.

I have measured out a 5k training run along the shores of Bribie Island, no roads, no vehicles. It is on a path along the waters edge. I hope to do it soon and I will take some photos to show you the sights.

Still running at 7 minutes per kilometer on the treadmill at the gym.

There is a 5k fun run end of June on Sunshine Coast, maybe it will be my first official fun run.

Why 21k

2011-05-20T21:22:00.000-07:00

Why is this blog called 21k. I have decided to run a half marathon, a distance of 21 kilometers. Well, decided to, but we will see, maybe I get there maybe I don't. It's a goal for about mid 2012 so there is time enough to condition my body particularly my legs to the distance. Along the way there will be reports about the training and blogs about other things that interest me, such as photography, digital art, etc.

The background to deciding to train for a half marathon is this. I have been going to the local gym for several years now so I am in reasonably good fitness condition. I enjoy physical exercise. Will I get there? buggered if I know, but I will give it a go. There are other people in the gym RPM class who run half marathons and they inspire me to have a go.