After the Christmas and (upcoming) New Year celebrations and obligatory over-indulging of food, I, like many people will be trying to shift the extra weight in the new year. So, with the help of Endomondo, I’m going to train up again for a 10K – not a 10K race this time, just try to get up to the 10K distance again, then take it up to distance Half Marathon for the second half of the year and/or early 2015. The training plan is over half a year and I stretched it out to its maximum length deliberately to allow me as gradual work up to 10K.
I know I can do 10K, I did a race earlier this year (Chickenshed 10K), but after slacking off because of weather, I need to get back into it.
Today’s run: EASY RUN WITH 5 STRIDES 4.60 KM (20sec high, 1min recovery x5)
I ran around 3k, but my phone rebooted. Again. Also, found an angry rash developing on my arm, which seems to have developed since my blood test earlier this month, so I’m going to get it looked at at the walk-in clinic tomorrow, and check with my GP next Wednesday.
Today’s run was a complete failure. Most of my runs recently have been depressingly bad and work hasn’t really helped. If anything, it’s contributing to my lack of motivation.
Achieved: 2.83k, 18:44min. Today was the first day I tried using my new Polar heart monitor. Not a watch, but a chest strap version, and it uses Bluetooth. My previous attempt at using this wrecked havoc on my tracking, but today, it seemed OK. It tracked my heart okay, and it also let me see where my heart rates tended to be. In today’s run, my average BPM was 140, and max 171. I think I can hit higher, but today was an easy run. I really like Endomondo’s bar chart which tells you on what band you spent most of of your heart rate. For VO2 training, you need to hit Anerobic or Maximum, which is bands 4 and 5. The heart rate bands are configurable, so now I need to figure out how to calibrate my bands….
Today’s training failed miserably. I was trying to use a new heart monitor, along with Zombies Run and Endomondo. I guess all of them together didn’t work very well together and kept dying. A reboot seemed to work, but we’ll see tomorrow. I have no run scheduled tomorrow, but I’ll run today’s tomorrow.
Today was my very first proper 10K race. Even though it’s not a competitive race (it’s a charity run), the push and pressure of being the chaser and chased during the run really drives a better time, I even broke my 5K time in this race.
My phone rebooted during this race, so I lost crucial tracking, which is why when I merged my workouts on Endomondo, it comes out less than 10K. In fact, if you zoom in on the map of the race, you’ll see a gap in the tracking which is where my phone rebooted. Had I tracked that last 0.48km at the 4:43 min/km pace of the rest of the track, then my total 10K time would be 47 minutes, 10 secs.
But, it was all worth it….
At the finish line, I heard someone shouting out runner numbers as they passed the line. Maybe I’ll get a letter with my official time in the post in a few days?