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.

And Then, Another Minute Passed

A positive 2 weeks with definite progress to a new, though still elementary, level.
2 treadmill and swimming sessions each week and I got my 1st road run for 6 months in.

1st Road Trip
The road run on Monday achieved a pathetic 3 x 1 min intervals separated by 2 min walks with 5 min warm up and cool down walks. After the achilles pain and heartache following my runs in April I was staying really safe. 0.5km actual run with 1.5km walk.

On a Roll(er)
Both this week's treadmill sessions included 10 min and 1.33 km of actual run which is the most I've risked since the injury. Yesterday's treadmill session moved up to 5 x 2 min run intervals from the previous 10 x 1 min.
Fitness wise no issues, though I was surprised to note how much more effort 2 minutes continuous was compared to 1 min even with the same overall distance and longer walk intervals.
I did suffer some achilles discomfort in the left leg a few hours afterwards but I iced it when I got home and this morning all seems well.
Hope to get another road run in tomorrow then I guess no sessions 'till after the holiday.

Enjoy the Christmas holiday and I hope 2013 is a great year for anyone who has taken time to read my ramblings.

Now You See Me

Committed to getting out in the street eventually I treated myself today to a pair of running tights with fluorescent yellow flashes and reflective trim for the dark cold nights. They saw me coming.. and you'll see me going.. hopefully.

Knocked Back again
Second Treadmill session of the week week went well moving to 8 x 1 min run intervals with just 1 min walk between. Just about 2km again and all felt well until post exercise stretches when I felt a sting of pain in the calf in one leg and lower achilles in the other, can't recall which, doh! Anyway, 20 lengths of the pool was fine until climbing the steps which felt on the edge of hurting (but not).
Home stretches during the weekend triggered repeat alarming pulls and my hopes for a road run at weekend were put on hold as I kept having calf pain and my achilles felt 'weak'. However, there is no particular tenderness in the tendons themselves so I've delayed my Monday session giving another 24hrs and, rather than progress again along my planned training path, I'll restart as last week with 1/1:30 intervals.

Treadmill Pace
Treadmill pace for last week's second session was 8kph / 4.7kph (up from 7 / 4 previous) which felt about right. I noticed that the auto cool down speed was 4.8 so I think I'll adopt that in future for the walk interval. It also struck me during the cool down, that the gradient is dropped off and logically, my 5 min walking warm-up could start level and increase gradient after a couple of minutes in a reverse fashion.

Another Kilometrestone

OK, so "milestone" is a more familiar term but it's a 10 km not a 6.2137 mile target.
Today's treadmill session reached the pathetic but significant 2 km mark, the same sequence of 7 intervals of 1 min run and 1:30 walk as last week but with a slightly higher pace.

Followed up with a 400 metre swim which is getting easier and 20 minutes of ice when I got home and so far, achilles are holding up.

A Question of Pace
Yesterday, the car was in the garage about 15 min walk from home and I checked my casual road walking pace on Runkeeper which showed 5.5kph. I rechecked again when collecting the car later, also putting in a brief gentle jog, and Runkeeper output averages of 5-5.5kph (3.5mph) walk and 9-10km (6mph) jog.
My previous treadmill efforts were 4 and 7 so I thought I'd up to 5 and 8 initially. Oddly, 5kph proved a fast walk so I wonder about the App' or the Treadmill's accuracy. I settled for 4.7 walk but found 8 a nice steady easy run. I'm clearly going to struggle to cross reference between treadmill and road pace.

Next Steps
Another treadmill and swim later this week then, as long as I have no achilles problems before weekend, I hope to get a very short road run in on Sunday.

Checkpoint (For the Record)

This post is for my reference really rather than a wider audience.
This all relates to recovery from the Achilles Tendinopathy I suffered 6 months ago.

Yesterday felt really good after the Gym session and pool. I took the precaution of 20 min ice at home and took it easy the rest of the day. Ibuprofen gel applied after evening meal to help with an inflammation as there was an odd feeling of stiffness/pressure/weakness? about my ankles.
At bed time, I was alarmed to note actual pain in right tendon quite low down. Compression sleeve on overnight and this morning no pain in tendon but still this odd tentative feeling of weakness. Both heel bones have slight aches to the sides and I feel faint stinging sensations where the tendon runs into the calf, particularly on left leg.
Feeling gently along the tendons triggers no pain and both seem nicely narrow and smooth so I don't think there is any injury.
I am hoping this is all related to my having upped my exercise frequency, tension and duration and is part of healing and regaining strength.
For the last week or so, I've amended my stretches from 15 at 5 secs quite jerky to 5 at 15 secs slow and controlled. I was doing mostly straight leg but I now always do straight and follow with knee bent. I've also added eccentric work on the edge of a step; 5 x straight leg to toes then on one leg down to heel lower than step followed by the other leg and then the same again with knee bent.
For exercise sessions, I'm concentration on warming up the muscles and tendons beforehand and stretching afterwards. There is differing opinion relating to stretching, particularly before, but reading a lot and trying to assess which sources have credence, this is the direction I have chosen. One source is the BUPA Great Run Training page Stretching section.
All this considered together with it being the 1st week I've done 2 full sessions at the gym and pool means a lot is being asked of them.  I think/hope I'm doing the right thing; I'm pretty sure I should have attended to the exercises more thoroughly earlier on - laziness and lack of will power are not good for recovery.
Next gym session in 5 days.

No Contract - More Gym

At the beginning of last week, an IT contract I'd been working on for some time ground to a halt. A shame for me but very sad for the many people who lost their jobs as 2 companies collapsed in on themselves with mass redundancies. I counted many of these people as friends and regret not getting chance to say good bye. I wish them well.

The other side of this coin is that, just as I was considering trying to increase the frequency of my Treadmill sessions beyond the one day a week I had free, this has released 3 more days so I am getting in 2 sessions a week.  Last week I stuck with 10 minute sessions with just 3 minutes of running interspresed with one and a half minutes walking. Today I upped it to 25 minutes with 7 one minute runs totalling 1.6km (1 mile). Each treadmill session followed with a swim, 20 lengths today.

payasUgym is a fantastic bargain when using Tesco vouchers. I've had about £40 worth of sessions now but only spent two £5 Tesco vouchers as a result of new joiner and other miscellaneous bonuses. A £5 Tesco voucher gives £15 of payasUgym which is 3 sessions so effectively £1.67 a go for a fully equipped gym and a 20m pool.

I'm now totally into the Runkeeper Android app and runkeeper.com website for tracking all my training. The treadmill and pool activities are entered manually whilst such as the 6km road walk this Sunday was recoreded and saved by my smart phone. I also keep a log on the BUPA Great Run website which ties into my ultimate target of 60 mins for the Great Manchester 10km just after my 60th birthday in May 2013, hence twitter hashtag of #60at60.

Be prepared, if the achilles survive, this will shortly become a sponsored event so be ready to dip into your pockets.

1 Mile Forward

After a weekend in Derbyshire with a 7.5 ml walk on Saturday and 2 miles each way to the pub on Sunday, I had a little high calf pulling and slight discomfort in tendons. The trainers I walked to the pub in have a firm high back and I now think that was more responsible for the tendon discomfort than the tensioning. By this morning I was happy that I could return to the gym which is a day early this week due to appointments on Thursday.

I stretched things further today with a 25 min treadmill session which seems to have gone well.
It started with a 5 minute walking warm up at 4 kph, which feels a comfortable walking pace, then 7 x 1 min at 7 kph which I find a casual running pace. These Run intervals were alternated with 1.5 or 1 min walks over 15 mins.
The last 5 mins was a treadmill controlled gradual cool down with the elevation gradually dropped from the 2.3 I had set down to zero. Total distance 1.6 km which is coincidentally 1 mile.

As I hoped in my last post, I did extend on the treadmill last week but I struggled with the mechanics of changing the settings from a 10 min simple 'quick start' session including trying to use the Intervals programme which proved no use at all. The result was a rather fragmented effort with halts and wrong speeds and elevations but was a little beyond previous attempts resulting in about 5 mins of run intervals..

I continue to finish off with 10mins in the pool after each treadmill session and currently feeling rather optimistic.  Seeing the osteopath tomorrow for another check and laser so it will be interesting to hear what he says.