Michelinman to Superman

RayCun

I'm sure there's stuff you can do at home - sit-ups, press-ups, that kind of thing - without putting pressure on the ankle and knee...

G-Money

I'm pretty sure I'm going to venture out in the next few days and do 3K or so and see how I get on. The knee and ankle are feeling better and shouldn't need much longer to clear up.

I also feel like I've made massive improvments to my diet this week so I'm really eager to resume running to help burn more fat and speed things along. Am surprised at how restless I'm starting to get. It's funny though as I often look forward to the days where I'm not running but then I spend loads of time thinking about it too.

Going to check out a couple of running clubs next week too.

G-Money

Ended up not doing anything this weekend, just of just resting up a bit more. I'm resuming training this week though so that should be good. I seem to have lost 2 lbs in the last week through eating better although my diet still isn't perfect. Once I correct that and start regular training again, hopefully the weight will fall off.

Aiming to get check out a few clubs tomorrow night too. If I don't chicken out of it that is before then!

RacoonQueen

G-Money wrote: »

Aiming to get check out a few clubs tomorrow night too. If I don't chicken out of it that is before then!

No reason to chicken out. They'll all be friendly and welcoming - just go down and tell them you're considering joining up and would like to go out for a few sessions with them. You could ring or email first so you know who to ask for when you get there, or if you have a friend already in the club just go down with them, I think you mentioned you know people in Rathfarnham?

Don't chicken out, everyone had to go for the first time at some stage they won't think anything of it.

G-Money

So after a bit of procrastination I finally went and checked out a couple of running clubs this evening. A friend of mine is in Rathfarnham AC and he had been on at me a few times to come down and check it out, including last Tuesday but for various insignificant reasons, I never did. I felt bad thought last Tuesday for not going and promised myself I would go today.

And to my surprise, I actually did. I headed down to Bushy Park to meet up with the Rathfarnham club first and to have a chat with their coach. Unfortunately he's away this week which I didn't find out about until I got there and in fairness my mate only found out then as well. I hung around for a while to see what they were doing and I have to admit I definitely felt quite out of place. They were all super-slim and seemed to be able to run quite well and I immediately felt out of my depth even though I wasn't even running with them or anything. I didn't bring my gear with me this evening as I just wanted to go check the clubs out first and I didn't want to get roped into a training session straight off.

I then headed over to meet the crew from Sportsworld and the lady I was talking to was quite friendly. I definitely felt like the odd one out hanging out in their club house for a while and felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb. I went down to watch them do their workouts as well for a while to get an idea of the levels of fitness in the people participating. After about 40 or 45 minutes though I decided to head home as I'd seen pretty much everything I needed to see.

Out of the two clubs, I'd say Sportsworld would be a lot more suitable than Rathfarnham AC. I'm still super slow and Sportsworld seemed to have a much broader range of fitness levels and possibly it would be a bit easier for me to slot in there. I definitely was the heaviest person there though and felt quite a bit self conscious about that.

So I have ruled out Rathfarnham AC now which is kind of a shame as I knew at least one person there. However the groups they had training tonight were much too far ahead than I would be and for the time being it doesn't seem like it would be a good fit. Sportsworld seemed good and I kind of liked that the coach was calling me "the new guy" which made me feel like I was already a member. She said to come back some evening with my gear and try it out.

The other option I have is to check out Dundrum AC however they've told me flat out that I cannot come along and try out the sessions but that instead I'd have to join immediately if I wanted to take part. From what I understand, the group (womens Mini marathon training group and Meet and train) would be a lot smaller than the numbers who were training with Sportsworld this evening but they would be aimed at beginners and everything.

I don't know if there are any Sportsworld members reading this, but if you seen a guy in jeans and a black north face fleece standing around like a bit of a pleb this evening, that was me

RayCun

If you join Sportsworld now you'll be roped in to helping out on race day

misty floyd

Sounds like sportsworld is the one to go for.
By the way, everyone feels like a pleb when they are new to a group. Fair play, get stuck in.

G-Money

After a 2 week lay-off for a couple of a niggles and a lot of procrastination and laziness, I went back out this morning to put a few more miles on the clock. Seeing it had been two weeks exactly since I ran and seeing I want to head out tomorrow for a run, I decided to just do 3k today.

I went to Sportsworld on Tuesday evening to check out their club and see their training and in the 45 minutes or so I was there, it didn't seem too bad. But I didn't want to head back and try it out without having blown the cobwebs off myself. When I was there, they had a couple of groups, one of which was doing loops of about 1.2k with about a 1 and a half or 2 minute break between. I think that is the group I'd most likely be tagging along with if I joined so I thought I'd try that this morning. In the end though once I'd done a couple of laps of the usual park this morning, I didn't really want to stop as I didn't feel the need to.

I went out a bit harder this morning although from looking at my stats, I wasn't really much faster and my heart rate was higher so I guess it just goes to show how much fitness can drop away if you don't stick at it. I felt fine this morning and wasn't wrecked although it was quite humid and by the end I was getting somewhat thirsty.

I was going to head in to watch the Donnybrook 5 mile but I didn't really have my act together this morning. By the time I got back from my run and got a shower it was about 10.45am and the race was due to start at 11am. Donnybrook is less than 10 minutes away on the bus so I thought I could still make it so I legged it out the door just after 10.50am. I got outside and only then realised it was raining so I had to go back to get a jacket and then I came back outside and saw the 46a go past. I walked up to the bus stop anyway to see if there was another one close behind it, but alas there wasn't. I had a look at the timetable at the stop and waited around for a few minutes but by this stage it was after 11.05am and there was still no sign of a bus. I knew I wouldn't make it to Donnybrook and find the finish line in time so I had to pull the plug on the whole idea.

Bit of a shame as someone I know was running it and was/is hoping to win it. I must check the results to see where he finished.

3.2k - 27 mins, 27 seconds

Avg Heart Rate: 171bpm
Max Heart Rate: 183 bpm

Avg Pace 8:23 min/km
Best Pace: 7:13 min/km


Splits:

8:28
8:33
8:11

G-Money

I really do hold myself back so much of the time. For the past two weeks I'd been eating reasonably well although I did have a couple of excursions into starvoville, the most recent of which was yesterday (Sunday). Despite all that I got up this morning and stepped onto the scales thinking to myself "It couldn't be that bad and I should be down a few pounds today." So you can imagine my disappointment when I stood on the scales and seen I'd only lost just over half a pound, 0.6 lbs to be precise.

To say I was disheartened was an understatement. I started to think back to all the times I've perhaps ate too much over the past couple of weeks and realised I probably could have, and should have, cut back more in certain areas.

With this in mind I put on my running gear and headed outside to do a few kilometres. Physically I felt fine but mentally I was all over the place. I was jogging along thinking to myself that this is a waste of time and that I'm never going to get thin. Only a few days ago I was watching that Going the Distance programme and criticising your man Stephen Nolan for saying he was giving up and has just accepted he's going to be fat for life. I thought to myself when he said that, that it was a terrible attitude to have, but here I am a few days later thinking the same thing.

Anyway I kept going and after a couple of laps I said to myself that I was going to do some extra distance today to make up for not having lost more this week. I aimed to do 3 kilometre's and then re-assess things then. By the time I was approaching 3k I said I would keep going and do 4k. But as I got to 4k I figured there was no point stopping so I said I would do 5k and in the end the Garmin was stopped at 5.10k which isn't too bad I guess.

Physically I felt quite good today and I started out a tiny bit slower than the last day and wanted to try and maintain a pace I could sort of talk at if I had to. Towards the end my legs started to feel a bit heavy and I could feel a bit of a stitch developing but both were pretty minor in fairness. My knee felt fine and even does so now after having walked back to my apartment and been messing around for the last hour doing shopping and getting petrol and the like. The grass in the park is back into a condition that's good enough for running again. The last time I tried it a few weeks ago, it felt very heavy or something but today it felt fine.

I didn't bother wearing my heart rate monitor today as I couldn't be bothered. I don't really like wearing it too much as it's a tad uncomfortable.

5.10k - 43 minutes, 12 seconds

Avg Pace: 8:28 min/km
Best Pace: 6:38 min/km


Splits:

8:45
8:53
8:30
8:12
8:03

Oryx

Well done on sticking that out and doing a good session. Working in spite of not having the right 'head' on will make you mentally stronger and able for tougher days. Keep it up

G-Money

I was supposed to go check out Sportsworld last Tuesday but for some reason didn't. If I remember correctly, I was incredibly tired last Tuesday at work so I opted to stay at home on Tuesday evening. I felt a bit bad about not going and was again meant to go this evening but again I had to decline. However in hindsight, I think it was for the best.

I came home from work and decided to head out and do 5k. Although I again had my usual trick of "Just do 3k and see how you get on". I started out at a comfortable enough pace but was definitely going faster than usual. I thought I might blow up half way around but to my surprise I didn't. I felt I was slowing a tad around the 2.5k mark but nothing major and it seemed to pass quite briefly.

I continued on anyway but I ran into trouble around the 4k mark; I could feel my insides starting to act up. I thought about continuing on as I had just under 1 km to go but about half way around the next lap I had to stop and head straight home. It was just as well I did as it was touch and go by the time I got back in the door.

It was disappointing as my pace was much better today to my surprise and I was very close to breaking 40 minutes for 5k which I haven't done since about Christmas. Ah well, 4.1k at a decent speed is better than nothing.

It really is funny how I seem to get faster from 3km onwards. Not quite sure why but I'm definitely not complaining.


4.1k - 33 mins, 49 seconds

Avg Heart Rate: 173bpm
Max Heart Rate: 185bpm

Avg Pace: 8:04 min/km


Splits:

8:04
8:09
8:03
7:59

G-Money

I meant to head out yesterday morning (Saturday) for a run but through procrastination and tiredness/laziness, I didn't bother. I then proceeded to come off the rails food wise yesterday too and while I've had days where I ate much, much worse, I could have and should have, ate a lot better yesterday.

So feeling somewhat guilty, I made myself go out this morning and go for a jog. I started out with my usual mental trick of just talking myself into doing a short distance initially, perhaps one or two kilometres. I was going along and stopped just about the 0.9km mark as I needed a tiny break. I walked for about 20 or 30 seconds then I started up again and was fine for the rest of the time. I think I was going a bit faster today than I had been about a week or two ago and to my surprise it didn't seem that difficult.

Although for some reason my head was just full of super negative thoughts and emotions this morning and I'm not really sure why. For the first 3 or 4 kilometres I was kind of just going through the motions and while I felt fine physically, my head was doing it's best to derail me.

But then for some reason once I hit the 4 kilometre mark, it seemed to shut up and I started to feel better. I don't know if it was because I knew I had the workout mostly complete at that stage, but thankfully all the negative talk seemed to quieten down. The last lap of the park felt very fast and the last 100 metres or so I just felt like I had so much more speed. I actually forced myself to stop at the 5.1k mark when I could easily have done another lap or two at that pace.

I'm not really sure why I made myself stop. Perhaps I was worried about overdoing it. I'm still quite overweight so that's always in the back of my head so I am conscious of trying not to do too much.

I also noticed my heart rate has come down already even just from last week which is a big surprise and improvement.

5.14k - 41 minutes, 48 seconds

Avg Heart Rate: 162 bpm
Max Heart Rate: 174 bpm

Avg Pace: 8:07 min/km
Best Pace: 6:26 min/km


Splits:

8:14
8:20
8:04
8:05
7:59

G-Money

I've really been slacking off big time over the past week when it comes to running. My diet has been ok-ish but running wise, I've been terrible. I went out for a 5k run last Sunday and hadn't been out for a run since. I'd no reason to skip the running either really, but I allowed my head to talk me out of it.

With that in mind anyway, I got up this morning and made myself go out for a run. It wasn't that much of a struggle this morning to make myself go, but I could already feel myself making excuses as to why I shouldn't go. But once I was up about 30 to 40 minutes and had fully woken up, I grabbed my gear and headed out the door.

I wasn't sure what to expect this morning but as usual just tried to con myself into doing the run and pretending that I was only going to do a couple of kilometres. Perhaps it's a bit sad to think that way, and instead I should be raring to go at the thought of doing 5 or 6 kilometres or whatever the distance is. However sometimes I'm just not that excited at the thoughts of it so I usually just tell myself to go do a couple of kilometres and nine times out of ten, I will end up doing more.

I went out this morning then and lately I've taken to forgetting about my pace and time to a certain extent. I bring the Garmin with me to record my stats and to measure the distance I'm running. I'm trying not to think about how fast I'm doing each kilometre or 5k or whatever. I'm just going out and starting at a pace that it's comfortable. If it's too fast, I slow down, if it's ok, I keep going. So far that method seems to be working ok. I used to go out too fast and then blow up after about 10 minutes and then other times I felt like I was going too slow and was holding myself back. So now I just go at a comfortable pace and try not to think "is this too fast, is this too slow".

Today's workout was good and thankfully, no negative thoughts in my head telling me it was a waste of time or anything. My knee was giving me some discomfort but nothing major, I just think it's one of these niggles you get when you take up running. It went away after about 10 minutes then appeared again for a few minutes towards the end then it was ok again. I felt quite good today and felt positive once it was finished.

I hope I'm not jinxing myself for my weigh-in tomorrow, but I thought my running top felt a bit baggier this morning. Not sure if I was just imagining that or what, but it didn't seem quite as tight as before. Let's see what the scales say tomorrow. I haven't had a perfect week food wise so it could be interesting!


5.13k - 41 minutes, 23 seconds

Avg Heart Rate: 167 bpm
Max Heart Rate: 178 bpm

Avg Pace: 8:04 min/km
Best Pace: 6:51 min/km


Splits:

7:47
8:14
8:13
8:04
8:04

Bally8

Dont worry about those negative thoughts G-Money. I used to be the exact same. I cant count the amount of times I thought to myself 'Why the hell am I doing this? This is not fun!' and 'I've decided to be fat for the rest of my life'. But you have kept at it and thats fantastic. You aren't letting those negative thoughts win. Believe me there will come a day when you look forward to your run and feel brilliant about yourself for doing it. All this struggling will stand to you in the end.

Oryx

Really try to hook up with a club. One club session a week will do wonders for your mindset as well as your training. It really does make a difference to your motivation knowing that youll be out with others regularly. And youll get tips and chart your progress better too.

Fight the negativity. You CAN do this and you ARE progressing.

G-Money

So after much deliberation and stalling on my part, I finally went and tried out a running club this evening. I went to see Sportsworld a few weeks ago just to meet them and see what their training was like. I meant to head back but I kind of kept making excuses and never went.

However something changed today, not sure what though. I'd been annoyed with myself for putting it off before and today I kind of felt like there was a good chance I was going to go. The last few times I was meant to go, I'd instead come home from work and almost straight away know that I wasn't going and would start the dinner or whatever. Today was different in that I was careful about what I ate during the day. Ate a few banana's in the afternoon ahead of going to the club, and I came home and didn't get settled down for an evening of doing nothing.

I was definitely apprehensive and quite a few times I sort of felt like turning back. Even when I got to Bushy Park and had to drive a good bit to find a parking space, I did half consider just heading home. But instead I parked the car, got out and sort of slowly walked to the club house. Even as I was walking to it I kept thinking to myself "Should I just walk past it, and loop back to the car?" But I went in anyway and got greeted by one of the staff straight away. I can't remember the guys name, but he wasn't there the first night anyway. He told me I could try it out for free for two weeks and then decide if I wanted to join. That is quite generous as I had pretty much decided I was going to join anyway assuming I didn't hate it.

I got talking to a couple of the staff and got introduced to a few people. There were a handful of newbies there tonight as well. We started off with a big enough lap as a warm-up and one of the guys actually ran with me for a good part of it and chatted to me. Although as we got about half way around my ability to keep up the conversation had diminished

We headed to another part of the park and ended up doing loops. The main group was doing a bigger loop however the coach had me do this other loop by myself that didn't have this nasty hill in it. I think I might have been able to do the hill but I didn't mind that she told me not to do it.

I brought my Garmin with me and I think the loops I was doing were about half a kilometre. I recorded the stats and they are:

0.54k - 4:20
0.53k - 4:24
0.52k - 4:27
0.54k - 4:37
0.45k - 4:11 (I forgot to start the timer for this one so that's why it's a bit shorter/faster)

So all in all, it wasn't that bad of a session. I did feel a tiny bit bad doing the first lap on my own but after that I didn't care too much. She kept telling the newbies to just go at their own pace and kept telling me to walk fast and jog slow. I can usually do 5k without too much trouble so I didn't need to stop for any walking breaks so that was grand.

A few of the members who were lapping me were giving me words of encouragement which was an unexpected but welcome surprise.

It wasn't a bad session and I was much happier towards the end. Not because it was over, but I think I was in slightly bad humour at the start. Trying to get a parking space was a bit of a pain and with a load of cars around I think that started to irritate me a bit. By the end though, I was reasonably happy.

Thursday's session will be a fartlek session so it will be interesting to see how that goes.

RayCun

Well done for going along, the first step is always the hardest.

RacoonQueen

Looks like a good session. The hardest part is turning up and feeling like an idiot asking can you run with them.

G-Money

Aye it wasn't too bad. I probably did less distance today than during a normal workout that I'd do on my own but I didn't mind too much. It was more than I'd done this day last week when I was supposed to go and instead opted for a night of increasing the ass print I've made on my couch! :pac:

misty floyd

Well done on going to the club Gmoney. Not easy.

You gotta quit the excuses in your other posts and get out running as much as possible. I made an excuse myself yesterday and didn't run so you're not alone but minimise that sh1t. If you are feeling tired during a run, try a walk run routine but don't do this unless you REALLY are tired. You'd be surprised what you can do, beat the weak demons in your head telling you to sit down and chill.

Don't cut the food too much that you have zero motivation to do any exercise and don't be getting on the weighing scales. Just keep getting out to do something. The consistancy will get you there.

RacoonQueen

G-Money wrote: »

Aye it wasn't too bad. I probably did less distance today than during a normal workout that I'd do on my own but I didn't mind too much. It was more than I'd done this day last week when I was supposed to go and instead opted for a night of increasing the ass print I've made on my couch! :pac:

Now you just have to keep going back

Once you settle into a routine of going and get chatty with a few people you'll be grand. The quality of your training runs will increase as well once you get going. Sportsworld is a good club, waiting till after their big race to join up with them so you could avoid helping out was a great idea. :pac:

maria74

Glad you went along after you have been thinking about it for so long. Maybe you will even motivate me to join one soon!

We have both talked about the motivation problem over the last while and I think it's great that you have done something to address that, I bet its much more motivating to go and run with others than head ou on your own (I know that I found last couple months running with a friend has really helped me):)

Have a feeling we are going to be reading lots of motivating posts from G-Money in not so distant future!!:D

G-Money

maria74 wrote: »

Have a feeling we are going to be reading lots of motivating posts from G-Money in not so distant future!!:D

I hope so too. Was getting an odd sensation in my chest last night. It has happened me before over the years and tends to occur a few times when exercising over the course of a few days, then nothing for months. Went to the doctor at home before Christmas and he didn't seem to think there was anything serious wrong, although my cholesterol needs to come down apparently.

Don't really want to wait a week to go to the doctor again in the north so I'm going to a local one here in Dublin this evening. Was awake last night for quite a while worrying about it.

groovyg

Well done on going along, I echo what everyone else said the hardest part is going to the first session, once you get into doing those sessions regularly you won't like missing them. I was doing laps around Bushy on Tue eve and saw the sportsworld group heading off for their session, couldn't believe the size of the group. Best of luck with the doc appointment, try not to worry too much about the chest pain if you worry too much its likely to make it worse. hope its nothing serious.

G-Money

Thanks.

Yeah I went to the doctor and he told me pretty much what I was expecting, however he said if I get the feeling in my chest again go to the hospital straight away and get an ECG test done. It kind of freaked me out a bit and depressed me massively and I didn't know what to think about it. The weird thing is that the feeling is extremely random and would only happen once or twice in the space of about two weeks, only when I exercise and then not again for 5 or 6 months. So it's a very random occurrence. Most of the time I can jog along with no hassle at all.

Going to my usual GP next week though to talk to him about it. Am not convinced the guy last night fully understood me (slight language barrier), whereas my GP knows me and has my full medical history. Would rather get any tests done at home anyway. Will most likely be free as they are in the north too.

G-Money

Doctor kind of freaked me out a bit the other night and it's temporarily put me off running.

So instead today I went for a big long walk. I went out and aimed to do 5k at least but ended up doing 11.3k in the end. Could have easily done more the legs were starting to get a wee bit tired

Weigh-in tomorrow so here's hoping for a good loss.

G-Money

I went to bed last night thinking about my weight and wondering if I'd lost any. I woke up about 4am (I think the wind woke me) and my first thoughts were "Jeez it's windy out there" and "I wonder if I've lost any weight this week?". I managed to fall back asleep anyway and woke up at the more reasonable hour of 8am. I hopped on the scales and they showed...

A loss of 4 lbs! Last week I was 241.2 lbs and this week I'm 237.2 lbs. Pretty happy with that as I've managed to smash my two mini goals - I'm under 240 lbs and I'm out of the 17 stone range and into the 16 stone range (just about) into one weigh-in.

Not sure what my next mini-goal is, perhaps 235 lbs but I'm my head it's getting under 230 lbs. Although I'm only 0.4 lbs away from getting 10lbs off. I guess if I was at Weight Watchers I'd be getting a silver 7 this week!

One other thing. The other day I was going through my cupboard and I found a 2.5kg bag of rice. I held it and realised that's how much weight I've lost so far. I couldn't believe how heavy it was and found it harder to believe I had lost that amount of "weight" off my body. Try it out yourselves if you get the chance. It's a bit of an eye opener. Work out how much you've lost in total and then pick something up that weighs the same amount, I guess plates in a weights room of the gym might be the easiest to get your hands on. Then imagining having to carry that around all day. It starts to put it in perspective how much extra strain the excess weight put's on your body.

G-Money

Did a 6km walk today so happy enough with that.

I read something online where it talked about losing weight and how if you are bored and are thinking of eating food, go for a walk or something. I'm thinking of doing that from now on possibly. Anytime I get bored or whatever, head out for a half hour walk or something.

G-Money

Resuming my training/running. Was at the doctor this morning and he doesn't seem to think anything is wrong. Happy Days.

G-Money

I finally went back to the running club today and finally started running again after a two week break. I was a bit freaked out after my trip to the doctor two weeks ago and it temporarily put me off running. However I went to see my usual doctor last week and he made me feel much better.

With that in mind I went back to Sportsworld this evening. I originally had intended to go before and I did train with them once, but then didn't go back. I was half talking myself out of going this evening but again I kind of knew I would go seeing I came home from work and didn't start the dinner and instead just wasted some time until it was time to go training.

I was there a tad early and took the advice of a friend of mine and did a lap of the park which was 1.23k. I then went into the clubhouse and waited for the main training session to start and once it did we were told to go do a warm-up lap which was my 2nd warm-up lap and another 1.23k.

They were having a charity race and everyone had to chip in €3. Guess who didn't have one bean on him? They said though that people can drop the money in on Thursday night so I guess that is me obliged to go back

So I did the 2nd warm-up lap and then they had us do this big huge lap of the park. I'm not quite sure how far it was as I did it and thought that was it. But took a break for a few minutes, and did a shorter 1.2k lap of the park again and everyone else was finished so I decided it was time for me to stop as well rather than taking another 10 minutes to finish the rest of the loop.

I got back to the clubhouse and had stopped running no more than about 20 seconds when three of the members came over to me and asked if I wanted to do a cool down lap with them. I sort of didn't know what was going on at the start as I was still catching my breath and then all of a sudden I felt someone grabbing my hand and shaking it. Funnily enough the cool-down lap wasn't much slower than my normal lap but it felt a lot easier. I don't know if it was because I was running with 3 others or what. It was really nice of the 3 women to ask me to do a cool-down lap and it does surprise me how friendly the club members are in general.

So I did about 6.9K with the running club. And I walked to and from work which was another 4.4k approx, so in total I did 11.78k today. Not bad.