Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Yo yo yo yoga

Yesterdays run didn't start off well, so I decided to start off with some Fartleks.  My quickest pace turned in at 5.6MPH on the treadmill (about 10:43 Minute Miles).  I only was able to keep up at that pace for 1/5 of a mile, but that is better than zero!


I also put in a 1/4 mile at 5MPH (about 12:00 MM).  Once I made it to 2.25 miles I was able to calm things down and put in a steady 3/4 mile at a 4.5 MPH pace.


Tonight was the first night that I've actually done one of the sessions on the Yoga DVD!!  


I started off with getting in a warm up walk/run on the treadmill-o-doom.  1/4 mile walk, 1 mile run, with a 1/4 mile walk cool down.


Then I went on to the video.  It was a 32 minute routine.  They have 3 people in the video and I can tell you, I'm not even as flexible as their old fat inflexible guy in the video!


As a reminder, here is a link to the DVD that I bought:  Yoga For Beginners : The Essential Beginner Yoga Guide For Runners, Walkers & Desk Jockeys (2009)



I did the best that I could to keep up and get into the poses as best as I could.  I forgot to grab my stretch strap torture device before I started, so I had to get up quickly to grab it for a couple of poses.  Next time I'll have to remember to grab a hand towel too, as tonight I was a little too sweaty to be able to grab my legs for some of the poses.


Overall I think it was a good start.



Thanks for Reading!  Regards,
~Kipp

Lighter, Stronger & Faster for 2013!
Walt Disney World 1/2 Marathon
January 7, 2012-  FINISHED 3:48:49

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Oh what a night...

Okay, since last week I've slowed things down a bit after the Psoas muscle incident from last Thursday night.


I took it easy over the weekend and skipped my normal Saturday or Sunday run.  I felt like I was cheating.


Monday night I started working on my normal running stretches and some Yoga poses that are supposed to be beneficial for that muscle group.  (Warrior Pose 1 is one of them).  The DVD I bought is for starting people and assumes that you're not a super bendy Yoga person already.  It starts the poses off very basically, so they don't look exactly like those videos you see all the time.


Tuesday night I was feeling pretty good, so I decided to get on the treadmill-o-doom to see how things felt.


I did 1 1/4 miles with some jogging and walking mixed up.  After being warmed up, I then did my normal running stretches and more practice at the Yoga poses.


One thing starting to attempt these Yoga poses is that I'm finding that my balance pretty much sucks!  But these exercises should also help with that little problem.  I could definitely tell afterwards that some muscles were like "uhh... what are you DOING?"


Now on to tonight.  It was a VERY nice night out tonight, so I decided that I was going to go ahead and attempt a run outside.


WOW!  This was even my overpass route!


IntervalsPace (min/mi)Elevation (ft)
5:00 (warmup)17:162
0.75 mi (steady)13:50-0
0.25 mi (slow)17:11-0
0.75 mi (steady)16:00-2
0.25 mi (slow)17:24-1
0.75 mi (steady)15:473
0.25 mi (slow)17:28-1
0.75 mi (steady)15:30-1
0.25 mi (slow)19:201
5:00 (cooldown)20:14-1

Oh my!  That first 3/4 mile, I don't know what was going on!  It definately didn't feel like I was going that fast!  It wasn't a fluke of RunKeeper Either, as my HR watch has similar pace times!


The only thing that really got me tonight was my water/drink mix bottle developed a leak.  It really didn't upset me, as this was a cheap $.98 bottle that I got at Wal*Mart last year.  I'm actually impressed that it lasted this long!


Since I didn't want to push it tonight, I didn't listen to the music I had been practicing to last week.  The ONLY thing I worked on tonight was keeping my arms moving.  I'd notice that I'd be slowing down alot and I'd concentrate on keeping my arms going.  Other than that, I just felt a little stiff when I started out, but once I warmed up everything just seemed to click together tonight.


Now on to other bits.  Yes, I've been avoiding the weight check-ins.  I've been hovering right at 249 for what seems like weeks now (probably has been).  Today...  246!  ZING!  I was shocked!


One of the reasons I hit the scale today was several people had made comments or questioned this week if I had done something different.  So, here it is, I've also added a picture update tonight!  (yes, I KNOW my mirror needs to be cleaned... it's streaked so BAD!)




April 19, 2012
I don't see anything different myself, other than I REALLY need a haircut.  But I see myself every day.


Someone in my extended family shared the following picture on Facebook that I found to be really cool at the time :)





Weatherman says that we're going to cool back down again this weekend, so I'll see when I'll get a run in this weekend after I find out how I feel tomorrow after tonight's run.



Thanks for Reading!  Regards,
~Kipp

Lighter, Stronger & Faster for 2013!
Walt Disney World 1/2 Marathon
January 7, 2012-  FINISHED 3:48:49

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Muscles I've never heard of before...

Running report for this week so far...


Tuesday night... it was 50 degrees when I first started my run and we were having wind gusts up to 23-25 MPH.  Turned out to me a not very nice night out to run.  When the wind would hit me right in the face, I had a hard time breathing.


Since it was much cooler than it had been recently, my lungs also started to get the burn I get when trying to run in cooler weather.  I was originally aiming to do 4 miles but only turned 3 miles in.


Tonight the weather was much better.  It was 60 degrees and partly sunny with very little wind.  So I started off pretty good.


Okay, anyone ever heard of the Psoas muscle?  I hadn't either until today.


I'm pretty sure I've put a strain on my left one.  At around mile marker 3 of tonight's run, suddenly my left leg kinda felt longer than the right.  I had to slow down to a slow walk to ease the twinges I was feeling.


Once I returned home, I of course turned to Google to go and self diagnose my new issue.  The closest thing I found to what I was experiencing was the description of problems with the Psoas muscle.  What really hit me was it talked about running hills can aggravate it and that's what I've been working on recently!


So, basically, from sitting on my rear for the better portion of the past 10 years, this muscle tends to shorten up.  Now with the running I've done over the past year, I've probably strengthened it, but not done much to get it into the shape it should be in from regular stretching routines would provide.  One of the suggestions to help with this muscle group is one of the Yoga poses.


I'm taking it that my body is telling me that since I bought the Yoga workout DVD, I should REALLY start USING it!


It also suggested that I should take it easy with hills for a little bit while I let it get better.


On another note, registration for the Walt Disney World 2013 Marathon Weekend has opened up this week!  I wish I could have signed up for it right away, but I'll have to wait a week or three before I have the dough arranged just right to enter.  Having to get those new tires a few weeks ago really threw a monkey wrench into my plans!  :(


Well, I've had my after run banana and it's getting late.  I'm going to wrap it here for tonight.



Thanks for Reading!  Regards,
~Kipp

Lighter, Stronger & Faster for 2013!
Walt Disney World 1/2 Marathon
January 7, 2012-  FINISHED 3:48:49

Saturday, April 7, 2012

BPM Music Run

So, I've been hearing from some friends about training to certain cadence with  Beats Per Minute, or BPM.


It seems that efficient runners tend to run with about a Cadence of 90, or 180 BPM.  Now this can be done throughout your walk/run cycle.  All you have to do adjust your stride to go faster.
  
I downloaded some interval podcasts from Podrunner.com.  I chose one from their interval sessions for 10K training.  The music I listened to had a range of 137 to 154 BPM.  Now my coaching session in Runkeeper was the one I used from a few days ago, so in no way, shape or form did it match up to the intervals that the music was set to.


So, whatever BPM music was playing at my intervals from Runkeeper, is what I did.  I actually ended up doing some walking at 154 BPM and some Jogging at 137 BPM.


Surprisingly, my pace times ended up a lot more even than what I usually turn in.  In my later segments, I still slowed down some, but not as wildly as I normally do.

Intervals Pace (min/mi)
5:00 (warmup) 17:30
1.00 mi (steady) 14:53
0.25 mi (slow) 17:52
1.00 mi (steady) 15:43
0.25 mi (slow) 17:56
1.00 mi (steady) 15:43
0.25 mi (slow) 16:34
1.00 mi (steady) 14:43
0.25 mi (slow) 15:29
5:00 (cooldown) 15:55
1:42 (extra) 18:21


I did my Overpass route for some hill action.  I went over the overpass a couple of times and then ran around the neighborhood twice also.  No rooster and no little doggie tonight.



Yes, I did a 5.69 run tonight!  I actually forgot to re-set the repeats on this coaching section in Runkeeper and I was concentrating so hard on keeping to the beats that I didn't even realize I was over 5 miles!

My Polar Heart Rate Monitor shows that I averaged a 152 BPM Heart Rate.  This is part of my disappointment with the Polar HRM that I have, it only reports an Average, so I cannot load it into Runkeeper to see the actual segments where I go High or Low HR.  

There were a few sections where I was really starting to huff and puff, luckily the Podcast music had slowdown breaks about every 4 minutes or so.  It usually worked out that once I was starting to get overworked, a slowdown segment would come up and I could cool back down and regain my breath.

Now, even though I had some heavy beats beating in my ear (I run with only one earbud in), I had this annoying song stuck in my head.

I would really like to kick whomever it was that sent me this song.  I shall now punish all of you with it now... yes, Baby Monkey!  You thought Small World got stuck in your head and drove you nuts, just listen to this once!



On the gadget front, I did end up getting my iPOD/iPHONE wireless transmitter and its working out great!  I'm catching up on some of my Disney Podcasts that I've not been listening to regularly (Sorry Paul, Tracey and Scott, Dudes and Cats!  :(  )

Both of my vehicle car radios have the ability to go a little below the US Standard 88 on the FM.  So this transmitter I have has a "hidden" feature to let it go into Japanese or European mode.  In Japanese mode I can set it to 87.9 and be fairly clean signal anywhere I go.  Overall I'm very happy with my purchase.

So I called in to Sirius/XM to cancel my subscription and they gave me a free 3 month extension.  They must be desperate to keep their subscriber numbers up, because this is the 2nd time they've given me a free extension.  I find that I really don't listen to it all that much anymore.  My favorite station (Fist Wave) has really gone down in quality since I first started listening to it.  The merger between Sirius and XM really turned good stations into mediocre ones.  The stations now heavily repeat the sames songs, in fact when I was on vacation and listening to it for many hours at a time while driving to Florida, I could ALMOST figure out the rotation order, as I'd hear the same songs just about 2-3 times A DAY!  Every once in a while, they'd throw a curve ball in there, but mostly the same stuff over and over again.  


Now, if anyone were to think they'd like to get me a nice Birthday present next month, I wouldn't be upset if a Garmin Forerunner 405CX or the Forerunner 405 showed up at my doorstep.  Nope, not upset one bit at all. (/end subliminal message)


I'm going to beat my head against the desk to see if I can get that song outta my head before I call it a night.  Speaking of which, I think I'll end this post now.

Thanks for Reading!  Regards,
~Kipp

Lighter, Stronger & Faster for 2013!
Walt Disney World 1/2 Marathon
January 7, 2012-  FINISHED 3:48:49

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

I ran past Rooster Cogburn tonight!

Okay, maybe it was just a rooster.  No, really!  A ROOSTER just pecking away at some hay in someones front yard as I ran past tonight.  IN Indianapolis!  Now if I had been running up at my cousins farmland area up in Star City, I wouldn't have given it a second thought.


Meet Rooster
I stopped and looked at the rooster, the rooster kind of cocked his head at me and then I ran a few more steps and decided to take the picture (which really got   Runkeeper messed up...  since I had to take it out of my arm band to take the picture, it just created some havoc for a few minutes.)


After I ran a little further as I just about got to a corner I turn at, I heard the rooster crowing.  I just kinda shook my head and went on my way.  Maybe the rooster thought much like I did... that's really something I didn't expect to see today.


So I decided to do a hill run tonight.  I queued up a coaching session on Runkeeper that I called 4 mile run.  Well, I think I need to look at it a bit closer, because after I finished what I thought would be my last segment, it tells me to do another 1 mile, I was at 4.10 miles at that point already!  I decided against pushing it, as I was already quite worn out from the 4 miles already and it was VERY warm tonight (somewhere in the area of 80 degrees!)


Overall, the run went very well.  I also got 2 Fartleks in... okay, maybe not.  It was just me running across a very busy street to get over to my overpass road.  I did run as fast as I could across the road!


Little doggie didn't come out again.  So hopefully the owners have done something to keep him/her close to the house.



DISTANCE

1.00 mi
 (steady)
PACE

14:12 !!!
ELEVATION
CHANGE
3
0.25 mi (slow)15:300
1.00 mi (steady)16:24-2
0.25 mi (slow)15:542
1.00 mi (steady)15:331
0.25 mi (slow)17:04-2



There are also 2 more segments, my 5 minute warm up and a 5 minute cool down.  Since I have the repeat set too high, I just used the last 1/4 mile as my cool down.


I'm beginning to see some improvements in my pace!  In both running AND walking (Steady is my jogging segment, slow is my walking segment).  I'm really happy to see that my walking segments are improving, as before I usually slowed down to close to a 20 minute mile while walking!  The middle run segment ran longer because that's the spot where I have to stop for traffic to cross the road to get to the overpass I run over and I also had to stop for traffic coming out of the Church on the corner.


One last thing, Sunday was apparently a very exciting day around our neighborhood:


Man dies after shots fired in Indianapolis SWAT situation - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

YIKES!!  There was a helicopter going over the neighborhood for a while.  We're further back in the subdivision, so I didn't find out about this until someone at work asked me about it Monday morning!  It's not uncommon for us to hear a helicopter overhead, as we're close to the interstate and they fly around watching the road sometimes.


I just wanted to share my experience tonight and I'm going to wrap it up here.

Thanks for Reading!  Regards,
~Kipp

Lighter, Stronger & Faster for 2013!
Walt Disney World 1/2 Marathon
January 7, 2012-  FINISHED 3:48:49