Tuesday 15 February 2011

First run back

Blogging on consecutive days? I must be 'back' eh?

I'd have to class yesterday as a successful day in terms of getting back into the groove.

I went for a couple of 15 minute walks during the day and didn't feel weak or wobbly (though still getting the odd gripe pain) and that confirmed that I should go for the planned 9 mile run.

My only objective for that was to complete it. No concern for time and no expectancies of how it should feel. In the end it felt fairly good - considering I hadn't had a run for 8 days and had been ill. OK, from 5 miles it felt harder than normal and by the end my legs felt tired and a bit achey - more like a 15 mile run than a 9 mile one - and they felt stiff and sore afterwards (which was a surprise) but it was fairly hilly, had a couple of muddy patches where I had to run on well worn grass verges by the road, fairly windy and I've been ill. All in all an average of 8.22 a mile was perfectly acceptable:

  • 8:43
  • 8:09
  • 8:14
  • 8:18
  • 8:16
  • 8:34
  • 8:37
  • 7:51
  • 8:39

Not difficult to see where the hilly miles were.

In terms of diet I'll call yesterday a qualified success.

I'd planned to calorie count very carefully and started the day in that manner but post run I felt that a) I had lots of calories to play with and b) was eating foods that wouldn't be easy to count. For tea I had the post run delights of Bombay mix, couple of poppadoms, a banana, homemade chana chaat, homemade vegetable biryani (with a hard boiled egg thrown in) and then a hefty slice of bara brith and (I confess) 5 rich tea biscuits with a brew before bed. After the run I had 1745 kcals left to play with and that was to leave a 1000 deficit so I'm pretty confident I stayed under maintenance level and probably stayed close to target.

In fact, having just thought to weigh myself, it seems to be a typical 'first day' result:

  1. 171.8lb 18.5% body fat
  2. 169.0lb 17.7% body fat

I think I'd like to bear my soul like this for the next month or so to track progress and give me an extra nudge. Need to find a better way of doing it though, rather than re-typing each day, as there's no 'paste' function. Any ideas?

5 comments:

Alison said...

Maybe keep your weight tracked in a word doc and then copy and paste from there each time?

Great going on the run too. Reading you say that your only objective was to go out and complete the run is a great reinforcement for me that that is all I should be doing at the moment. It's SO easy to get caught up in pace and time goals, regardless of external circumstances. I need to be constantly reminded not to chase numbers, so thanks for that.

Unknown said...

Great first run back..

I'd be tempted to do the weight on an excel document... but I've got a thing about keeping track of things on there haha it just looks so neat.. not sure it would help that much to get it onto here although I think u can cut and paste..

Maria said...

Nice work on the run- especially after a long time not runnung- good to not have a time in mind.
To keep track I would do it in a word document- you can add to it each time and copy it out each time.

Jessica said...

Just caught up on the last post too and it sounds as though you've had quite the week ~ to come back with a run like that after being laid so low is truly impressive.

In terms of weight, I like the idea of an Excel document too. I would do the same thing, only I am too technologically challenged to work out how to use Excel! I'm pretty sure you could make your results into a nice graph that way too...sorry, I am a nerd that likes to measure things by graphs. My excuse is that apparently I'm a 'visual, intrapersonal learner' according to my postgrad evaluation in learning styles :P

And, without wishing to be too mushy, your comment meant a Hell of a lot to me, particularly coming from a bloke's perspective. Thanks for helping me to accept my freakishness and help me on the way to realising that it's okay to be 'quirky' ;)

BabyWilt said...

Does happy dance for you ... welcome back :-)