I Think I Got Away With It

Parkrun Goal
I'll say at the start of this, my first major goal has been for a while to complete a 5k parkrun by the end of February.

So I Lied
In my last post I said that I had reached 5k of actually run interval distance on the road but actually, when I re looked, I'd only hit 4.58! However, last week I definitely exceeded it with 5.33km run / 6.63 tot.  This was a really good run, I kept my heart rate below my target of 165 most of the time. My first run with music as well as RunKeeper, I wasn't sure if the apps would run together or drown each other out but they're fine. Music may have helped with HR.

Have I Blown It?
I thought I'd blown it following this extended run. I had not run for over a week prior and probably should have dropped back a little in my training plan.  We had been away to the island of Cumbrae west of Glasgow and circumnavigating the island we did do a 10.4Mi (16.7km) Walk followed by a 10.4Mi Cycle so we hadn't been idle, but I hadn't run for over a week.
After the 240Mi drive home in a pair of trainers with stiff backs I was suffering ankle pain and then, already a little worried that I had a problem, we spent a day walking the concrete floors of furniture shops and the Trafford Centre.
So, at the start of last week, my left had an issue up to and into the calf and my right had tenderness low down. Classic hurt first thing and OK during exercise as I'd had when the tendons were injured. Beginning to think that parkrun next week may not be.

I backed off any training early this week but by Thursday thought I could risk a treadmill session with a drop in duration and pace. I did an easy 3km followed by ice on left achilles as precaution. Still hoping for Saturday parkrun.
Friday seemed OK but by now I'm paranoid, scared of exacerbating any injury, not wanting to abandon my parkrun before end of Feb goal, feeling every real or imagined twinge.

Friday Night - Saturday
I decided I must go for it, so Friday evening I prepared my running kit before we headed out to the theatre in Manchester.
For a 59 year old, I was stupidly nervous of approaching my first parkrun, not knowing what type of athletes would be there, would I look an idiot taking it easy. Would I get in someones way and spoil their run?
Overnight I realised I hadn't got my bar code which I printed back in April before tearing my achilles.

parkrun
I parked 5 min away 15 min early and headed down to the start which all seemed quite relaxed then off for 5 min warm up fast walking feeling a little more comfortable. Achilles feeling OK.
I determined not to let myself over stretch and do some damage so set RunKeeper to tell me to do 6 min run / 2 min walk.  Got myself at the back so I would not be drawn on by the speed of those around me and then off. Easy first 6 min then embarrassing 2min walk. No one else walking at this stage and all the little kids are heading past me. I'm in danger of walking behind the whole field. By my 3rd interval, I'm passing some stragglers and a few others are walking.
Bramhall is quite a hilly park with some steep inclines and my heart rates are crazy, generally 175-180, 185 peaking on uphill sprint to 195! I keep trying to slow down but I feel great and am not particularly out of breath.
My last 2 min walk interval is signalled when there are only a couple of minutes left. My inner child finally won and whilst I did walk it was only for one minute after which I sprinted up the final hill and down to the gate. (What an idiot!)
Anyway, it's Sunday morning now, the day after, and I Think I Got Away With It! Achilles are feeling fine. Knees are a bit knackered but I think all is well. First goal achieved and it feels good.

Result
32:52 which I am actually pleased with given that I was forcing myself back. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and will be back for more. I was last (14th) in my age group and 350th in a field of 392 so I didn't finish way behind everyone as I had feared.
Feeling more optimistic about a sub 60min 10km at the end of May.

  
Running for St. Ann's Hospice in memory of Margaret Donovan (Mum) and Sheila Waddington.

A Smile May Be Worth 2 Heart Beats

Good Progress
I had 2 really good sessions this week with good distance/duration progress and dramatic improvement in run / walk ratio. Only 1 month ago I was just managing 3 x 4 minute run intervals on the treadmill compared to 4 x 8 minute run intervals yesterday.
Road running sessions 1 month apart, 4 Jan and 5 Feb have gone from 2.2km (18min) to 5.9km (41min).

Saturday, Road
A major goal reached with the run element alone exceeding 5 km, this was by far the longest session I have achieved so far.
I set off with my new toy, (Heart Rate Monitor or HRM - see last post), with the intention of keeping my heart rate (HR) below 165bpm. Once I started running, it went straight up to 172 and I had to force myself to slow down and relax to achieve 165.
On each interval it would be higher and I would again pull it down to 165. There was a noticeable increase uphill where I had to accept that 170 was unavoidable
At 165 I'm at a slow plod run from which it would be difficult to go any slower.

I was actually a lot fresher on return home after this session even though it was my longest road run by far. I felt I could have gone on at end of each 5 min interval. Mind you, my fitness must be improving so maybe I would have been OK this week anyway.

Tuesday, Gym
I was intending a road run but with snow on the ground and a generally foul day I headed off to the gym for treadmill and swim. Today was to be 4 x 8 Min's, a considerable push forward.

Knowing that during my last treadmill session I was exceeding 175bpm, I set out aiming at keeping below 165. I started by reducing the gradient I had been training at from 2.3 down to 1.6 but I was also keen to increase the speed to more like my road speed in my search for answers to the apparent effort difference between road and treadmill.
On my first 8 minute session at 10kph I managed to keep between 162 and 165 which pleased me, however, my second 8 resulted in 168-171 with peaks to 173. I decided to drop speed a little for third 8 min to 9.5kph and at first this seemed manageable maintaining 165 but by halfway through I was around 168 with peaks to 171, still, this was going in the right direction so for my fourth 8 min I reduced to 9kph with a fairly satisfactory 164-166 with an odd peak to 170.

Through none of this was I out of breath or struggling and my 3 minute recovery walks at 5kph got me down to 118, 125 and in the last one 134. These represented recoveries of 30-40bpm from steady which is re-assuring for health purposes.

Heart Rate Questions and Lessons
My HR during training is significantly higher than the default Cardio fitness recommendations on websites I have visited. Reading these, most suggest that I should be aiming mid 130's for the type of running I am doing at my age. I am 30bpm above this. This acknowledged, my resting HR is very low for my age suggesting I could use a lower age in tables but even this only permits me 140's leaving me still 20bpm over.

Searching through forums, there are loads of other people reporting 165-175 and describing the same situation of a comfortable breathing state and good recovery but unable to lower further without stopping running altogether.
A figure which keeps appearing is that HR defaults should be treated as having +/- 24 bpm error as everyone is different.  I could go for testing my Max Heart Rate to find the correct parameters for me personally but that seems unnecessarily taxing and I see no health benefit and some health risk in testing it without medical supervision so will give that a miss.
I will carry on monitoring and using the HRM as a way to avoid over taxing myself. It will be interesting to see if it does lower as I get fitter still.

Noticed to appear to make a difference:

• Thinking HR down whilst looking at the display seems to work 2-3bpm
• Relaxing shoulders (even if already feeling relaxed)
• Breathing out smoother rather than blowing out
• Thinking a bounce in step so that stride extends slightly and foot fall frequency reduces
• Relaxing my face into a smile seems to drop 2 bpm on the treadmill!  :)

  
Running for St. Ann's Hospice in memory of Margaret Donovan (Mum) and Sheila Waddington.

Be Still My Beating Heart

5 km and Counting
On Monday I surprised myself by reaching a significant milestone with a 5.05 km activity. 5.0 km is the distance in parkrun which is my first race goal and I hadn't expected to reach that distance that day but due to running faster than planned, I covered more ground. It did include warm up and cool down which were both 5 min's so really it was only about a 4 km activity, but hey, GPS had 5 km on it when I got home so I'm having it.
Today I clocked 4.95 km on the treadmill, excluding warm up/cool down in a session of 4 x 7 minute runs with 3 min walk intervals.

Until today, I have been treating warm up and cool down as part of my cumulative activity. To be honest, until a few weeks ago I'd have only been out 10 min's if I didn't. Anyway, now I'm in the area of 5 km, I will exclude those so that my records show actual activity distance and duration only.

Heart Rate
For reasons associated with fascination with data, Decathlon's website, discounted kit and impulse spending I have ended up with a cheap Heart Rate Monitor (HRM) watch.  This is proving entertaining but also slightly concerning.
My resting heart rate is about 54bpm which for age 59 is pretty darned good. However, when it comes to training the figures appear rather high. In a steady and not that taxing 4 x 7 min treadmill session I was recording a high of 175bpm on the runs reducing to 135bpm by the end of each 3 min walk interval. Now, the drop of 40 is great but everything I've read infers that I should be aiming at highs of about 132bpm where I'm currently over 170bpm.
I shall experiment over the next couple of weeks and update you.

I am hoping to use the HRM to solve my puzzle of the different effort between road and treadmill. I feel I'm putting about the same effort into 11.5 kph on road and 9 kpm on the treadmill with a 2.3 gradient set.  In theory, I can correlate these by using my heart rate to identify the same effort. I'm actually quite excited about this which I realise is pathetic.


  
Running for St. Ann's Hospice in memory of Margaret Donovan (Mum) and Sheila Waddington.

Heading For The Goal

Progressing
Progress has been excellent since my last post. My Treadmill sessions continue to extend and 2 more road runs have given me a lot more confidence. As yet, my errant achilles are remaining intact.

The following distances and times include 5 min warm up and 5 minute cool down walks.

• 23rd Jan 2013: 4.5 km of which 2.9 km was running. 31 mn overall / 15 mn running
• 17th Jan 2013: 4.0 km of which 2.2 km was running. 29 mn overall / 12 mn running

I am gradually improving the ratio of run to walk with my latest road run being 3 x 5 min running with interval walks down to 3 min. I think I'm going to stick at 3 min recovery walks for a while now while extending the run interval duration.

Goals Set
As I mentioned in early posts, I am using the excellent Runkeeper App to track my progress. Yesterday I finally entered a couple of goals, the Great Manchester Run 10k is on 26th May and my ultimate goal and I have given myself a goal of completing my first 5k parkrun by 24th February.


  
Running for St. Ann's Hospice in memory of Margaret Donovan (Mum) and Sheila Waddington.

Cramping My Style

Cramp!
CRAMP for God's sake! I thought I'd torn something in my calf but the Osteopath tells me I just had a severe localised cramp, probably partly due to dehydration after sitting around in too hot rooms drinking too much booze for 2 weeks over the Christmas holiday. It still took a week to stop hurting, cramp or no cramp.
Properly hydrating now and swigging tonic water for good measure as the Quinine really helps with cramp.

Off Down The Road
Back to training again now and Saturday saw my 3rd road run, well walk/run anyway. 3 x 3 min runs with 4min walk intervals and 5 min warm up and cool down - I'm still scared of the achilles so am forcing myself to be careful.
This road run was a major milestone as the distance and time equalled my disastrous first outing back in April when I injured myself. 

• 12th Jan 2013: 3.7 km of which 1.7 km was running   27m overall 9m running
• 22nd Apr 2012: 3.6 km of which 1.7 km was running   25m overall 8m running

Training Halted Again

Training halted again, calf pain this time. On the 18th length of the pool last Friday I suddenly had pain in a knot inside my left calf muscle. I haven't risked any runs since but I did go for a 7 mile hill walk on Sunday which caused it to hurt sometimes. In M&S last night, I was having no trouble then just out of the blue it hurt again when I moved after I'd been hanging about waiting for Lynne.
It doesn't hurt most of the time but poking around in the calf locates a painful firm area. I think it's improving but I've been up a ladder pruning trees this morning which pulled a bit occasionally and was hardly resting it.

Getting worried as the weeks keep disappearing and I'm not even at 5 km yet. Most recent progress was to 3 x 4min runs split with 3 min walk on treadmill.   (1.7 km actual run in 2.57 km overall)
On the positive side, achilles feel fine after all this time.

Received my first sponsorship this week which is great. Feel free to join in below.

60@60 goes sponsored

Saint Ann's Hospice
St Ann's Hospice provide remarkable care and comfort for those in their last days and their families and friends. My efforts in the Great Manchester 10k on 26thMay 2013 will be driven on by the memory of my Mum, Margaret, and also Sheila Waddington, a classmate at primary school who I had just got to know again when she became ill in 2012 and spent her final days in St Ann's care.

60at60 - a reminder
In 5 months time I will be sixty years old and I decided to try to mark the occasion with a better than 60min completion of a 10km run. I began training last April and then lost 6 months with achilles damage due to over enthusiastic beginnings and ignoring my age. Only now am I free enough of pain to feel able to commit to requesting sponsorship toward this charity.

Donate (please)
Donating through Ged's JustGiving page is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.
So please dig deep and donate now.