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It's amazing how the body remembers. I was a pretty handy triathlete 5 years ago but have done bugger all in the past 5 years (the odd ride or run). Started back training properly 2 months ago and I just managed to run a 39:40 10km. Considering I'm 95kg (I was 80kg when racing) I'm pretty happy, the weight just hasn't come off yet :(
 

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Managed to increase from 900m last Saturday to 1.4 km's today before the break (my target was a park which i just made). It's been however quite difficult to get the chance due to the weather of late. Only Tuesday morning and this morning have been possible.
 
Still finding it hard to get fully into the swing of things. I've upped the ante with the running but still being a bit too loose with what I'm eating and drinking.

Anyway in terms of the 1,000km goal I have managed 6 runs in 2014 for a total of 41.6km so far. 4% of the way there. :)
 
MinerBoy said:
Still finding it hard to get fully into the swing of things. I've upped the ante with the running but still being a bit too loose with what I'm eating and drinking.

Anyway in terms of the 1,000km goal I have managed 6 runs in 2014 for a total of 41.6km so far. 4% of the way there. :)
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You're not that far off the pace. 4% of the way there and we're 5% into the year.

I'm pretty much on track with my 2014km in 2014 goal. Year to date has me sitting at 103km.

Also in the process of completely revamping my diet with the aim of shedding around 4% body fat by mid year to have me sitting at 9% body fat come marathon season.

Doing a STACK of injury prevention work too. Probably spending 1/3 of my total exercise time on injury prevention, which is very new to me.
 
Bloody calf is frustrating me at the moment, had to pull the pin on Saturday after 10 total kilometres (stretch at 7km, felt a slight tightening at 3km). Yet I feel 5000 times sorer after agreeing to do some interval training with the footy lads 24 hours later.

Mind you, I plan not to start massive training for Canberra until this time next week.
 
WildRover said:
You're not that far off the pace. 4% of the way there and we're 5% into the year.

I'm pretty much on track with my 2014km in 2014 goal. Year to date has me sitting at 103km.

Also in the process of completely revamping my diet with the aim of shedding around 4% body fat by mid year to have me sitting at 9% body fat come marathon season.

Doing a STACK of injury prevention work too. Probably spending 1/3 of my total exercise time on injury prevention, which is very new to me.
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How do you go about measuring body fat and what steps are you taking to make that reduction if you don't mind me asking?
 
MinerBoy said:
How do you go about measuring body fat and what steps are you taking to make that reduction if you don't mind me asking?
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I've got weighing scales that do the measurement, so it's a bit hit and miss, but it's a bit of a guide.

I'm already pretty skinny so i'm not trying to lose weight necessarily, so i'm not eating less. My eating habit has always been breakfast, lunch & dinner with little to no snacking in between. This meant i was always VERY hungry at meal time, so i would smash down huge portions, with bread on the side, go back for seconds etc...So what I'm doing now is reducing portion size at meal time and now having a snack at 10-10:30ish and 3ish. Meaning I'm not as hungry at meal time, and the snacks are specifically light, with Low GI and little to no sugar to make sure i stay feeling full for longer. So examples of snacks are yoghurt with muesli, berries & stewed fruit, banana muffins using wholemeal flour, ryvita/rice cakes with philly cream cheese etc...

My biggest problem was breakfast. For years and years I have simply had Milo cereal. SOOOO much sugar in that. So i've completely cut that out and replaced with natural porridge. I TRY to avoid too much potato, white rice, white pasta in main meals. So replace those with stuff like sweet potato, brown rice, quinoa, polenta. This is hard though cos I LOVE my spuds. Reduce the amount meat in meals, so instead of 300-350gm piece of chicken, go 250g and add extra vegies like green beans, asparagus, peas etc...

Most important though, is still allowing yourself what you really enjoy every now and then. So during the week I try and be a good boy, then on the weekend where I do most of my running, i smash out a nice big curry, or the full on roast dinner with all the trimmings, or a creamy pasta. Whack a bit of chocolate cake and ice cream in there and a couple of beers too. I'm not a professional so I'm not gonna give up the things i enjoy on the weekend. Plus on the weekend I have usually done a 2hr run burning around 1800-2000 calories, so i need to replace all that at some point.

I think that should just about cover any questions! Sorry for the long post, but you did ask!
 

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After a slow start I finally got going in January and ended putting in a total of 76.4km for the month. Unfortunately a really busy end to the month (full weekend cricket, visitors etc) meant I didn't get much running done in the final week as I felt 100km was on the go at one stage.

Anyway, 17km done in first 4 days of February so up to 93.40km for the year so far. Feel like the 1,000km should be pretty easily achievable as long as I maintain motivation.
 
My January ended up at 164km. Pretty consistent right through the month, but the late Jan heat coupled with my 30th probably kept the km below 180. It's been an ordinary start to Feb with only 17km ticked off so far, with the aim being to hit around 170km for the month. At least my long runs are now consistently 18k+ and regular halfies should see the 170k achievable.
 
In an effort to change my training for Canberra, instead of training to DISTANCE, I now am training to TIME. This week was 1 Hour, next week will be about 1:20 moving up to over 2 hours in a fortnights time. The distances will naturally take care of themselves. Will be entering the Twilight Run in Brisbane in late March in the next fortnight which will be the lead up event that I like to enter prior to marathons.
 
So after almost two weeks on Wednesday without a jog due to the heat and a lot of work, I jogged 3k in 20:15 which was my time to the second 2 weeks prior. Today I did something different being the weekend and went down to the river trail to see how I would go from the park to the bridge and back (a little over 5k from my starting point). 5k in 41:55. Did things a little differently today too due to the new route. I would jog maybe 300-400m then brisk walk for about 100-150m and repeat. My bpm at the end was 148. It was a good change and much more scenic so I think I will do this one weekly.

Edit* As a newb to this, I've set myself 50k from Feb 5th to the end of the month and to increase on that monthly. Sitting on 11k since Wednesday.
 
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Nothing wrong with a walking recovery if you need it. I often do this to split training runs to mix things up (plus it means I can go full tilt for the first section).


Boosting my training runs this week to 1 hour 20, which if not for a heavy shower today I would have done. Had to be content with 1:15 in which I covered 13.7km, which I expected given I wanted to run at a slower pace than normal.
 
Just knocked over my 40k/week goal this week. Saturday long run cut short by some pretty ordinary stomach cramps with 4k to go, but oh well, that happens sometimes. Going to rethink my food intake pre-long run. Rather than a decent breakfast, will try to load up Friday night with lots of pasta/rice/carbs then just get a little something in the stomach 30 mins before the run, see how that goes.

Been two fairly light weeks in a row now, so will be adding 1-2k to my mid week easy runs to make them 8-9k on Tuesday & Thursdays, and time to bump the Satday long run up to 22-23k now. Also starting to put some hills into them just to see if Great Ocean Road Marathon is a realistic chance.

Keep up the good training!
 

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How's everyone travelling? With cricket back on the agenda (C grade have roped me in to bolster their batting leading in to finals. I did win the A grade batting last year and am leading scorer in our club's history. As such, the 207* I made last week was probably unfair on the oppo but I still wanted to brag :p:p) .....aaannnnyyyway, I'm not quite getting the kms in that I had thought I would but I'm still at around 75km for February so far and I plan on hitting the road tonight and tomorrow so I can break the 100km barrier for the month.
 
Hey guys, new runner(using the term loosely) here.

I have been running two times a week now in addition to playing basketball 2 times a week. I am running around 6klms it is taking me around 50 mins.

I know this is pretty slow, should I reduce the distance and try to up the pace? Just keep going and bring my time down? Am I over thinking it all?
 
Gday JohnW. Without knowing your age, weight, fitness level etc we can only give generic answers. 50 minutes for 6km is awfully slow but depending on what you're trying to achieve it may not be an issue. If you maintain your program as it is (2 x 6km, 2 x basketball) then I'd be staggered if you didn't bring that time down reasonably quickly anyway. However, if you feel like you want to improve your speed then try breaking your runs up into interval type sessions.

Eg. After warm up.....run hard 800m, jog/walk 500m, run hard 800m, jog/walk 500m etc.... Can do this over whatever distance you are comfortable with and you can also alter the distance of the run v jog sections. Just find what works for you. This way you still get distance in your legs but practice some speed work with some recovery time before you go hard again.

Others can probably explain the benefits of speed work better than me but that's the general gist of it.

Good luck.
 
MinerBoy - 207* solid innings right there!!

JohnW - What are your goals/what do you want to get out of running? Do you wear a heart rate monitor? When running 6k in 50min, are you absolutely knackered and pushing yourself to your limits? Or are you simply one foot in front of the other and cruising? How much court time do you see in your basketball matches? Do you tend to just stick in the defensive key, or are you running repeated intervals up and down the court? Do you tend to do 4-5mins on court, then have a spell on the bench? All things need to be considered. As Miner said, to get a good idea of advice for you, we need to know your current fitness levels/physiological make up, prior injuries, past running experience, goals etc... Training for a 5km time trial is completely different to training for a Half Marathon and more. As MB says, intervals are a fantastic way to train your anaerobic engine and your fast twitch fibres, but these two are (almost) useless if you want to go for distance.

Me - I'm at 160km for Feb and currently 12km ahead of my year goal. Longest run to date for the year is 22.5 - which is less than I was hoping for, but I have been concentrating on long hilly runs so a touch less distance isn't too concerning right now. My speeds haven't seen much improvement, but I don't care at all about that, speed will come when it's ready. Injuries are being kept at bay nicely through 1 day strength at the gym plus 2 core sessions and 2 ITB rehab strength routines at home during the week. If I could give one piece of advice to people starting out running distances it would be to strength train! It doesn't take long but it's absolutely vital! I put it 2nd most important training aspect behind the long run. I've drastically reduced the amount of sugar from my diet (I just can't give up peanut butter - i'm sorry, but i aint doing it!) and have reduced weekend beers from anywhere from 6 to sort of 18 on a weekend to a limit of 2, usually on a Satday/Sunday evening for dinner.

That was a longer post than I intended!
 
hey guys about 175 cms around 8o kgs.

When running it is a bit one foot after the other, I do try and up the pace when possible. I am pretty knackered at the end but not 100% totally stuffed.

Re: basketball we play with 6 players each player sitting for about 7 min's in total for the came, meaning 33min's of court action, I get up and down the court but not sprinting. I can run out the games strong.

No prior injuries (excluding a couple of rolled ankles), no running history.

Ideally I would like to get my 6klm time down, and work up to 10klm these are the medium term goals. Depending on how they go a HM or something else may be of interest, I am a realest though and know that any thought of that is a long time off.
 
I dont think a HM is out of anyone's reach....certainly your sporting history, and your physiological make up suggest you probably could run quicker than 8min/km

Firstly, I personally don't think 2 runs per week is enough. Whilst your basketball certainly helps maintain fitness, it's not running fitness.

So if you're currently doing 6k in 50mins, let's start by making a nice round number, work on your 5k pace. 6k is a bit of a nothing distance really (IMO). Create a goal, at current pace you do 5k in approx 42mins, set your goal at 35mins. This brings you down a whole minute per km, quite an improvement. But i think you could go quicker (although I don't know you and you could well be 85 years old), but you need a starting point. What you will do is focus

1. Introduce a 3rd run on the weekend. This will be your longer run. BY the sounds of tihngs your not stuffed at the end of 6k, so use that as starting point. Gradually increase this run distance over the weeks. Your progression might be: 6, 6.5, 7, 5.5, 6.5, 7.5, 8, 6.5, 8, 9, 7 and so on and so forth. Run this run SLOW!!!! This run is all about getting more miles into your legs.

2. An easy paced run. Quicker than your longer run, but nothing like interval pace. For yourself, this would probably be run at your current pace, or a bit slower. This easy paced run will get quicker as you improve. Just take it easy.

3. Intervals! Do these once a week! NO MORE! You will get injured I can almost guarantee it. As a relative newbie, you're probably better to add a bit of speed work at the end of your other two runs. For example, at the end of a long run, for the last 1km up the pace by 20-30s. In the middle of your tempo run, do 1km with bursts, maybe 200m @ 20s quicker, back to normal, 400m quicker, back to normal, 100m long strides etc...You can really do anything you want, just increase the speed for a short spell. Another good one would be to plan your long run, say a 7.5k run, but make sure you finish with 1k uphill and try and maintain your pace. Great for strength!

If you want to get adventurous and start doing specific interval/speed work, some suggestions for workouts are:

i). 400s & 800s : I suggest starting with 4 or 5 intervals. Mix and match them if you want. For example. 400m/800m/400/400/800, or whatever combo you want. These should be at or near your "race pace" (which from above could be 7min/km). Use about a 2 min active recovery between each interval (active recovery should be light jog or a brisk walk).
ii). Ladders : Either go up or down the ladder. For example, if you're going down the ladder. Start with 1.5k @ slower than race pace (so this might be your regular 8min/km), then do 2x800m @ 5k pace (7min/km), then 2 x 400 @ quicker than 5k pace (maybe 6min/km), finish with 2x200m @ almost sprint. Use 400m active recovery between each interval. So 800m, recovery, 800m, recover, 400m, recover etc....If you want to go up the ladder, just reverse it.
iii). 200's : Pick two relatively quick times to run 200m. For yourself this might be 45s & 60s (oyu might need to experiment with these times, it's not an exact science). Anyway, now run these alternating times for 200m over a 1.5-2km run. So for a 2k run, you will repeat the 200m sets 5 times. No rest in between the 200's by the way. This is a tough workout if you get the right pace!

Oh yeah, and don't forget to warm up!!!!
 

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