Reboot

Trying again. Updates to follow only if I'm not a loser.

7/2/07: Walking home from work

More like "The Walking Flax," but then I haven't been doing my running outside. Rather, it's been inside on a treadmill. I've hit a good pattern - I do an hour total, with 12 minutes at 2 mph, then 12 at 3, then 12 at 5, then back to 3, and a final 12 on 2 again. It works pretty well, I do about 3 miles, and it's not overly strenuous. I tried to work in 6 mph to a recent workout and it just floored me. The 1 mph difference is surprisingly huge.

Anyway, here's the walk map. I thought about walking back from work - about five miles - but I didn't really feel like walking all the way up Michigan, so I took the 146 to Delaware and hopped out before it became express. Here's the map.

My feet were tired by the end, but my regular sneakers are getting up there in age, too. (I have a new pair that I use just at the gym.) Still, I was pretty happy with a four-mile walk, done at about 20 minutes a mile. This may well end up being the last relatively cool day where I could do this and not get home soaked, so it was good timing, and made up for having forgotten my gym clothes. (I also hadn't really been looking forward to the gym since I'm still fighting off an allergy or cold or something that has caused my sinuses to go nuts, so this was a pretty low-stress substitute, all told. And I still burned 375 calories!)

Did a brick and I'm drowning slowly

Alma has been working on an "indoor triathlon" at her gym - 2 miles running, 10 miles biking, and 12 laps in the pool. I did the first two parts - known for whatever reason as a "brick," or so she tells me - today, as a measure of solidarity. I felt pretty good afterwards and my pulse never topped 150 or so, which is good news; when I first started trying to run again, I would soar up around 180, which is more than a bit fast, so it appears I'm managing to regain (or just gain) some fitness.

For the record, I did the two miles in 31:05 - it was one mile walking and one mile running (broken up, not straight-up consecutive like that) - and the bike in 27:48, for a total time of 58:53. Considering I had conservatively estimated my time up around 70 minutes beforehand, I think that's pretty good - even more so considering I felt fine afterwards (and even did 20 reps of chest press with 17.5-lb dumbbells). We'll see how I feel in the morning, of course, but I think I stretched pretty well this time.

(As far as the title of this entry, that's what I hope won't happen when I try working the swimming in, perhaps in the next week or two.)

4/9/07 Gym Report

Today I did two miles on the treadmill - half a mile walking, half a mile running, another half mile walking, and a final half mile running. I felt surprisingly good afterwards - running indoors (and on a treadmill) is not quite the same as running outdoors, of course, but I thought it was pretty good distance not to feel totally winded. Of course, I tried to run on the track a week and a half back and wore down pretty quickly. The difference may be that when I'm running on my own, I might go faster than I should because I'm not really aware of my speed. I did about 5.5 mph on the treadmill and it worked pretty well.

I did a handful of weight machines on the floor below after the run, as well.

Weight on the gym scale after I got out of the shower: 193. Lower than it's been for a while, it seems to me. I've been eating generally lighter - not much snacking, smaller meals - so I'm sure that's been helping too, but that plus the gym can hopefully push the number ever lower. I haven't been under 180 in five years, so that's a goal on the horizon.

A slightly different tack.

If it seems like I haven't updated this in forever, well, it's obviously because I haven't. But recently I joined the gym right behind work, and I went four times in five days last week. This included 20-30 minutes on an exercise bike every night, plus two nights with weight work and two nights with 30 minutes of walking and jogging. If I can build myself up a bit, then maybe when the weather gets nicer I can run outside and not be so quick to give up. At that point perhaps I'll put some more run maps up here. But until then, I'm focused on just making sure that I stick with the gym. I figure having to put money down for it is going to encourage me a little more. Wish me luck.

Today's map:

http://www.mapmyrun.com/view_route.php?r=291ed47d1e06f6e94cffe9abb89bad59

I tried to push myself a bit, and so ran nonstop from Cornelia to Irving Park (about five full blocks) and then again from just below Buena to just above Addison (another five full blocks or so). That equals about 1.25 miles of running with only a small break between them (a quarter-mile walk). Of course, by the time I neared Addison my legs were absolute jelly, though I still made my goal of reaching the ped tunnel (at which point I flopped down onto the stairs there and had to sit for almost five minutes). All told I did about a third of a mile more than the previous two outings and felt comparatively fine when I got home, so the stamina seems to be building. The legs are still getting there, but the lungs and heart seem to be handling things pretty well. I sat down briefly to get my heart rate at Irving Park and clocked it at 180 over the first 10-15 seconds but receding to 150 over the course of a full minute. Obviously that's not great based on my supposed "target heart rate" (180 is pretty high), but then I am significantly out of shape and overweight. We're working on that, I think.

Today's run map:

http://www.mapmyrun.com/view_route.php?r=2357c95cc40d89dcbb7a92c6de659197

I was out from 10:40 to 11:10, probably the only time in history where my entire run took place before noon (and quite possibly any of it). This time I headed north instead of south, and pushed myself to run uninterrupted from Cornelia to Irving Park. I crossed Lake Shore at Addison and ran along Recreation Drive to Irving Park, where I had to stop, but it was 5:30 of uninterrupted running, so that was pretty good (edging past my high from Wednesday, which was about 5:20). I did a couple more short bursts of running, from Grace to Patterson along Pine Grove and then from Pine Grove back to the apartment along Cornelia, but after that first stretch my legs were pretty tired. All told it was about 2 miles, and this time I didn't rest at all (always walking if I wasn't running), so the time calculations are about right. I burned around 275 calories - not a ton, of course, but not bad for the distance and early stages we're at here.

I'm not going to bother to puff this one up as my latest attempt. It is, but making a big deal out of it only seems to set myself up for failure. Is late September the best time to start running? Maybe not. Is there a better time for me right now? No. I can only look at myself disgustedly in the mirror so many times before I have to suck it up. But actions speak louder than words, so I offer you this instead of a bunch more bluster:

http://www.mapmyrun.com/view_route.php?r=dc4519dc83210e1693ef627e447a0168

Finally, someone has combined my need to run with my love of maps! Not all of the two miles was running, as I explain on that page; the portions between the start and stop signs were, so from Cornelia to Belmont on Lake Shore, and from roughly Aldine to Addison on the lake shore path. That's somewhere between 3/4 of a mile and a mile, depending. I spent ten minutes actually running. Two miles of a walking/running combo isn't bad for a start, anyway, especially since after stopping at Addison my legs were so weak it took me 20 more minutes just to get back to the apartment.

I'll keep updating with run maps as they happen, but I don't think I'll say too much besides that for right now. I've gotta walk the walk (or in this case, run the run) before I can talk the talk.

Ow.

Did my ambition outstrip my physical capacities? The thing to note here is that my Achilles went nuts after my second run two months ago, too. I think they're just not used to this kind of workout. Alma suggested a modification to the schedule that throws in a day of walking, something more like:

Day 1: Run
Day 2: Weights
Day 3: Rest
Day 4: Walk
Day 5: Run
Day 6: Weights
Day 7: Rest

Might help a little, at least. I only got about 2/3 of a mile today before my Achilles, especially the right one, felt ready to give out. That, of course, is no good. I'm not really sure what to do on this front - the Achilles derailed me last time, and I don't want them to do it again. But by the end of the run today I physically could not keep running - too much soreness in the right one.

Walking will have to be part of the answer, though it takes much longer to go as far and I'm never going to lose five pounds a month walking. Maybe I should do the weight tape three days a week, rest two, and try and run/walk two. For a start, anyway; eventually my Achilles have to stop giving me this much trouble once they get used to things. I really, really hope.

Weight, weight, don't tell me

My legs were still too sore to consider another run today, but I never really got a chance to go for a walk, so instead I did a twelve-exercise program on a DVD of Alma's called "Shaping Up with Weights for Dummies." The video is clearly aimed at an audience of housewives, but it seems fairly effective. I think I'm going to borrow it from Alma and also pick up some weights at Target tomorrow - a smallish set if possible, that goes up to maybe 30 pounds or so (which ought to be plenty for a while). Running will ultimately be the most helpful thing, I think, but it's nice to combine that with other stuff, especially on days when I'm not really up for a run (or if it's raining or whatever). An ideal schedule would probably look something like this:

Day One: Run
Day Two: Weights
Day Three: Off
Day Four: Run
Day Five: Weights
Day Six: Run
Day Seven: Off

That's just a rough estimate, and I don't know that I'll be able to do something five of seven days just yet, but it's something to shoot for, at least.

In the meantime, I'm adding a counter/schedule to the side of the page. You'll see what it looks like. We may finally be getting serious here.