Diary of a Gym-Dodger

Ouchette

I’m feeling in the mood to get fit as I can manage but with no particular goals. And I aim to do it all outside in all weathers because I hate the gym that much.

I finished C25k last year, then moved onto Bridge to 10k, which took me ages because I had to battle shin splints, sore ankles, then a dodgy hip as well as a lot of blisters. I’m just 2 runs away from finishing B210k now and trying to find ways to avoid slacking off afterwards. I’ve got a 10k race in July, but it’s a charity one with lots of walkers, so it’s not inspiring me to train much!

I’m not following any particular programme at the moment, just fitting the last 2 B210k runs in when I can, so I’ll just aim to do something about 4 times a week and list what I do.



Here’s this week so far:

Monday 2x45 minute brisk walk (to and from work). Worked too late to fit anything else in:(

Tuesday 1 hour jog plus 10 minutes warmup/down. No walk breaks or road-crossing breaks. Mapmyrun says it was 9.1km so it was a pretty gentle pace. 2x45 minute brisk walk.

Wednesday 1 hour bootcamp (BMF) session in the park. Beginner level but fooking hell it was hard. After the warm up the first thing we did was a race with 10 down-and-ups, 10 squat jumps, 10 press ups, 250m sprint, repeat 3 times. Shattering. Lots of work on the arms with partner providing resistance like a weights machine (to exhaustion, twice) as well as lots more short sprints and some core work in the rest. Curry and beer together afterwards though! 2x45 minute brisk walk .

Ouchette

Thursday: 2x45 minute walk. 30 minute run with fartleks. Sort of. Had an overambitious start and was wrecked after 20 minutes so I had to switch to walk/jog intervals. Wouldn't have guessed that throwing in some faster bits would make it so much harder. Will do this more often if I've only got limited time because it felt like a really good workout.

Friday: 1x 45 minute walk. Rest.

Ouchette

Saturday: Hill walking/climbing with a backpack (about 10kg). Only covered about 4 miles thanks to sideways hailstones suddenly hitting and forcing us to gtfo. Until that point it had been an increasingly steep uphill path at the fastest pace I can walk at, culminating in a 15-minute hands and knees rocky scramble. Good fun and a good workout while it lasted

Sunday: Only lugging my backpack back home on public transport.

Ouchette

Monday - BMF class. came 2nd out of the 25 or so beginners in the race at the beginning this time, so got put into the upper-blues and might have to move to the reds (intermediates) soon. Happy about that Muscles feel tired but not stiff afterwards, which is a huge improvement over aching for the next 5 days after my first class 3 months ago The usual walking too.

Ouchette

Tuesday: Gentle jog for half an hour. Very humid, so not quite as easy as I intended it to be. 2x45 minutes walking.

Got 3.5 exercise sessions in last week, so just missed my target. Should do better this week.

Ouchette

:mad:

Think I've poisoned myself with out of date freezer food. Had to drop out of BMF during the warmup last night because jumping up and down was not helping. Cancelled the lunch time run I had planned today too and I reckon I'll be out of action for at least tomorrow too. Bye bye 3 days of exercise

flutegirl

What's BMF? You'll be back on track in no time.

Ouchette

flutegirl wrote: »

What's BMF? You'll be back on track in no time.

It's British Military Fitness, since I'm in the UK for the forseeable future. It's bootcamp-style classes run by former army training instructors. I get as many classes as I can cope with for a monthly fee, so it's what I do as an outdoor alternative to the gym. Only good things to say about it so far

Ouchette

Finally felt well enough on Monday to get back out there, so I did another 1 hour BMF session last night. This one mainly focussed on arms. Lots of slow motion press-ups where we had to hold it at the lowest point before pushing back up again. No girly knees on ground press ups allowed! Ow! Other than that though, pretty easy session. Really might be time I moved up to the next group.

Going to try to fit in a short run later today.

Ouchette

Tuesday - 40 minute-ish jog, with 1 minute running as fast as I could after every 10 minutes jogging. Felt good until I felt the usual blisters threatening, so I stopped at that point. It was long enough anyway considering I've got a tough workout ahead of me today. I definitely run best at night.

Ouchette

Wenesday - Bootcamp (and made an agreement after a couple of pints in the pub afterwards that for the next session I'd move up to intermediate if the girl who talked me into that would move up to advanced :eek:)

Thursday - honestly can't remember, other than the usual 2x45 walk. Oops

Friday - Nothing except dragging a heavy backpack across London and Manchester on public transport and putting up tents. Surprisingly exhausting.

Saturday - Hiking in Snowdonia. Only about 12 miles with a day pack on mainly easy terrain, but with some scrambling over rocks, steep hills and jumping over bogs (or blundering straight into one and sinking up to his waist, for another member of the group. Haha. Had to cut the walk short after that though because he lost his shoes.)

Sunday - Climbed Snowdon. Easy route (Llanberris path) but at a good pace, carrying day pack.

Monday - Carrying camping gear for 5 people down steep hill to carpark for the lazy-arsed men. Took a lot of return trips to do that Rest

Tuesday - Failed at fitting in planned run :mad:

Ouchette

Wednesday- BMF class. Put on a red (intermediate) bib for the first time and luckily came in with the reds in the race at the start. Would have been a bit embarrassing otherwise. Survived and kept up. I'm out of the noob class now, and one step away from the nutters/greens/advanced!

I thought I might puke at one stage though. Glad I hadn't eaten anything beforehand.


Other bit of news I might as well record, I got a new app to measures my heart rate. My resting heart rate is 57 now. A year ago it was around 80, so that's come right down.

Ouchette

I did a couple more bootcamp classes and runs then went and hurt my hip on a long trail run. I don't remember doing it but it was stiff and hurt like hell the next day, so I took a couple of weeks off to heal.

Back to BMF last night and but the noob bib back on to see how it went. Felt really good apart from the 30degree heat- no pain at all but it was so hot that jogging was a relief just because it made the air move past me as if there was a breeze! Blisters have all healed up nicely during the rest too.

Going to take it fairly easy until I know I've definitely mended.