Well, I don't know that you can call walking along a path up a mountain climbing as such, but it took me half an hour to get to the top today. Mount Ainslie has an elevation of 842 metres, so it's a little over one third of the height of Mount Kosciuszko. Of course, we didn't climb the whole 842 metres! I looked up the course of the Mt Ainslie run-up to see how far we'd gone. The run is 2.2 km with a 240 m elevation gain.
We probably walked a little further than that, as Alex and I started from the CSIRO car park. I walked to the car park from my place, which took me 25 minutes, and then we headed up the mountain. At times we were both puffed out, which had me wondering about the people who run up this mountain once a month. Whenever I do wonder about them, I think they are crazy, but I also envy them their fitness. Today, while I was walking up the hill, I was wondering if I would ever be fit enough to give it a go. At the very least, I am going to practise walking up it, as a way to get used to hills for the City to Surf. Alex is willing to come along with me, which is great. Company seems to make these things easier.
I found it harder to go down than up. I'm a little afraid of stairs at the best of times, so the various stone steps were a challenge. Mind you, my balance is much better than it used to be, so I handled them better than I expected.
There were lots of people on the path, which surprised me. I don't know why. The people of Canberra are very active. We were passed by a few runners as well, although we only encountered one who ran down and up while we were on the path.
Fernwood Biggest Loser Challenge Finale
The Biggest Loser Challenge awards lunch was held yesterday. Two of my team members came 1st and 3rd, which was pretty special, and Black Team won the team challenge. The gym manager kindly awarded us all star shaped medals. Ours were threaded on gold ribbon, which was a nice touch. We were also given a certificate, a present of some toiletries and a small bag of lollies, and an individual photo album with a series of photos from the event. They had gone to a lot of trouble, which I really appreciated.
I gave my speech and it seemed to go over very well. I was a little disconcerted, because they kept clapping my achievements when I didn't expect them to. For instance, I explained that I used to be puffed out for five minutes after walking up a flight of stairs and that now I could run for an hour without stopping and they all clapped. It was lovely but I'm not used to it, so it took me a while to find my speaking rhythm. Not that anyone there seemed to notice, as the feedback afterwards was positive.
I enjoyed telling them a story about an exercise that I used to see this woman doing when I first started at the gym. I'd be doing the dreaded step ups and she had this great exercise that I envied because it looked like something I could achieve. I demonstrated the exercise to universal amusement. She was doing a chest stretch by putting her hand on the wall and leaning. What's tragic about the story is that it's a true story. I really did wonder why it wasn't on my program!
You could see the difference in the way Team Black had bonded compared to the other teams. There were chairs set up in the function room, and my team turned the neat row of chairs into a circle so that the whole team was included. The other teams managed with the rows of chairs. I was extremely fortunate to be put into Team Black I think.
We headed off for a coffee after the event, and we're having our own breakup lunch in early July. It's taking ages because we don't want to leave anyone out.
Motivation
I've been having real motivation problems lately, particularly with my eating. Writing the speech was good for me, because it reminded me of the basics. I know what I need to do, I just have to do it.
I'll have to get myself back into a regular routine with the gym. We've been changing things like my personal training, trivia and squash. I'm one of these people who likes to be organised, so I'm going to start working to a schedule again. At the moment the only definite things are the Running Course on Tuesday at 6:45 am and personal training at 6:00 am on Thursday.
Mind you, tomorrow is a Public Holiday, so my gym is closed! Much as I like my gym, it seems to have the worst hours in the world. All is not lost though. I'm meeting up with one of the women I met at the Group Outdoor Fitness Challenge tomorrow for a bike ride at 9 am tomorrow. We're going to ride for an hour. I've no idea how far that will be, but I'm looking forward to it. I love how my circle of friends has increased so much with all my exercise activities.
Showing posts with label walking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label walking. Show all posts
Sunday, 10 June 2007
Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Squash and walking
I forgot to wear my HRM for squash today and it was the first time in weeks that I've actually worked up a sweat. Isn't it always the way?
Murali and I played our usual five game match, and the last game was a breathtaking decider. I guess I'm having to work harder because Murali is getting much fitter. I used to be able to rely on him running out of energy in the fifth game but now I'm having to work hard the whole way through. It was great fun.
Other than that, I did a fair bit of walking today. The walking challenge is in full swing and we've been asked for a team name and a team quote. One of the guys has come up with Flying Turtles. I think it's amusing so I'm voting for it. I hit the net and found a few good quotes for a walking challenge where we are counting our steps.
There was the obvious one by Lao-Tzu: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." I also found a Winston Churchill quotation that I thought was appropriate: "Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb."
My team is currently in 114th place of 3357 teams. That's much higher than we were last year, so we're off to a better start. There are seven members on the team, four men and three women. You're only allowed two athletes. They define an athlete loosely as someone who competes in triathlons or half/full marathons. We have one athlete. While he doesn't race, he runs those kinds of distances on a regular basis. Unfortunately, he's injured at the moment with a torn calf muscle. Fortunately, we also have two crazy women, of whom I'm one. When I say crazy, Alex and I did a lot of walking last year. We've both started strongly this year as we know what we need to do this time.
To give you an idea of the number of steps involved in this, my team has an average step count of 11.5k steps/day at the moment, compared to an overall average of 7k steps/day. The leaders have gone out hard and have an average of nearly 26k steps/day. I'm currently sitting on 16.1k steps/day (10.3 km).
Over the term of the challenge, people's activity increases significantly. Last year, the overall average was 9.5k steps/day. This was despite the fact that a number of teams stop entering their steps part way through the challenge. My team ended up in 23rd place with an average of 18.3k steps/day. My overall average last year was 21.1k steps/day. I managed to walk 25k steps/day for the last 25 days of the challenge, which was a real effort. It takes hours!
I didn't put my GCC goal in writing the other day. My soft target is to do better than last year, and my hard target is to get my overall average up to 25k by the end of the challenge. I haven't gotten obsessive compulsive about it yet. Going on last year's effort, I'm sure it will happen soon. *blush*
This challenge got me fit enough to start running, so I'm really glad I had a go at it. I think it also saved me from a lot of the beginning runner injury problems I've heard about, as I was walking the equivalent of 16 km/day by the end of the challenge. By the end of October I had legs of steel!
You get your step count up much faster running than walking, so I'm relying on the challenge giving me added incentive to get out there and run over winter. I'm sure it will help on those cold Canberra mornings.
Speaking of cold mornings, it's going to be -3 degrees Celsius overnight, so I have begged a lift to the outdoor fitness challenge tomorrow morning. I decided that there wasn't a lot of value in turning up as a popsicle. I'll be rugging up. I wonder how many layers I can wear and still run. I guess I'll find out tomorrow.
Oh, and I put my electric blanket on the bed tonight.
Murali and I played our usual five game match, and the last game was a breathtaking decider. I guess I'm having to work harder because Murali is getting much fitter. I used to be able to rely on him running out of energy in the fifth game but now I'm having to work hard the whole way through. It was great fun.
Other than that, I did a fair bit of walking today. The walking challenge is in full swing and we've been asked for a team name and a team quote. One of the guys has come up with Flying Turtles. I think it's amusing so I'm voting for it. I hit the net and found a few good quotes for a walking challenge where we are counting our steps.
There was the obvious one by Lao-Tzu: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." I also found a Winston Churchill quotation that I thought was appropriate: "Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb."
My team is currently in 114th place of 3357 teams. That's much higher than we were last year, so we're off to a better start. There are seven members on the team, four men and three women. You're only allowed two athletes. They define an athlete loosely as someone who competes in triathlons or half/full marathons. We have one athlete. While he doesn't race, he runs those kinds of distances on a regular basis. Unfortunately, he's injured at the moment with a torn calf muscle. Fortunately, we also have two crazy women, of whom I'm one. When I say crazy, Alex and I did a lot of walking last year. We've both started strongly this year as we know what we need to do this time.
To give you an idea of the number of steps involved in this, my team has an average step count of 11.5k steps/day at the moment, compared to an overall average of 7k steps/day. The leaders have gone out hard and have an average of nearly 26k steps/day. I'm currently sitting on 16.1k steps/day (10.3 km).
Over the term of the challenge, people's activity increases significantly. Last year, the overall average was 9.5k steps/day. This was despite the fact that a number of teams stop entering their steps part way through the challenge. My team ended up in 23rd place with an average of 18.3k steps/day. My overall average last year was 21.1k steps/day. I managed to walk 25k steps/day for the last 25 days of the challenge, which was a real effort. It takes hours!
I didn't put my GCC goal in writing the other day. My soft target is to do better than last year, and my hard target is to get my overall average up to 25k by the end of the challenge. I haven't gotten obsessive compulsive about it yet. Going on last year's effort, I'm sure it will happen soon. *blush*
This challenge got me fit enough to start running, so I'm really glad I had a go at it. I think it also saved me from a lot of the beginning runner injury problems I've heard about, as I was walking the equivalent of 16 km/day by the end of the challenge. By the end of October I had legs of steel!
You get your step count up much faster running than walking, so I'm relying on the challenge giving me added incentive to get out there and run over winter. I'm sure it will help on those cold Canberra mornings.
Speaking of cold mornings, it's going to be -3 degrees Celsius overnight, so I have begged a lift to the outdoor fitness challenge tomorrow morning. I decided that there wasn't a lot of value in turning up as a popsicle. I'll be rugging up. I wonder how many layers I can wear and still run. I guess I'll find out tomorrow.
Oh, and I put my electric blanket on the bed tonight.
Thursday, 24 May 2007
Outdoor exercise, fun run and walking
I'm exhausted. It's been a big day for me as far as exercise goes. I haven't decided whether to wander down to the gym later to do a little more walking on the treadmill. I'm tempted, as I have 27873 steps at the moment and the walk to the gym and back would take me over the 30k mark for the day. I had planned to do a 25k day today for the GCC, but the extra steps are a real bonus. My theory is that it's easier to keep your average up if you start hard.
This morning it wasn't as cold when I ventured out on my bike. There was no sign of rain either. I made it to Lennox Gardens in 25 mins, which is my usual time, but I wasn't quite as stressed today. The ride home seems much easier as there's daylight involved, which reduces the chances of me running into something. Mind you, there are more people around when I ride through town, but that's a small part of the ride. Most of the time I'm on bike paths where I only have to worry about inanimate objects and the occasional jogger.
I'm not sure what to call this morning's session. It was an exercise circuit I guess. We were running around a rectangle, inside which were a number of activities. These included running inside ladders, jumping along a set of cones, running back and forth and putting shuttlecocks in cones, weaving in and out between cones and jumping back and forth inside a pentagon. After our warmup, which evolved from a walk to a mini version of the interval training from Tuesday (jog the short side, surge the long side), we split into two groups. One group jogged the long ends, sprinted the short ends while the other group did an activity in the middle for 2 minutes. We kept swapping over until we'd done them all and then repeated the set more intensely for 1 minute at a time.
It was fun, although I wasn't at all keen on the jumping. I know that plyometrics are supposed to be good for me, but I am quite happy to 'skip' them. (Pun intended.) My attitude today was a lot more positive. I think that's because I realised on Tuesday that we weren't being compared to each other. Intellectually I knew that but I lived it on Tuesday. Having been the slow runner and clumsy catcher who was always picked last for team sports at school, it's reassuring that I can be successful in this group situation.
Again, we were all worn out at the end of the session. The mood in the group is incredibly positive. People are enjoying the challenge so much. While we were out there it was getting colder and colder. When we arrived there was a little evidence of frost. When we did our cool down jog we were crunching our way across frost patches all over the place. Luckily, we were all warm by then.
At lunchtime, I participated in the ABS fun run with some of the women who are doing the GCC with me. It was a 7.3 km run around Lake Ginnindera. I haven't been around that lake before, so it was unknown territory. I didn't expect to run as fast as I did for the Mother's Day Classic, mainly because I'd worn my legs out twice during the week, so I was aiming to get round in 50 mins. I had a super soft target of one hour as well.
I have no idea how fast I'm running as yet, and I discovered that I'd covered the first km in 6:15. I tried to slow down, but I reached the 2 km mark in 12:32. By that stage I decided to start my 1 min walking / 3 min running approach. I was feeling tired already, and I figured that it would be silly to keep running at that pace. Kris, who was running with me, headed off on her own, and I settled in to work on getting to the end. I got to 3 km in 19:45 and to 4 km in 26:xx but I slowed down a lot after that. I missed the 5 km mark and was really struggling to run. Some of my 3 min intervals were lucky to get to the 1:30 mark. I kept going though, and I made it to the finish line in the official time of 49:04. This is just under 6:45 pace, and was inside my 50 minute mark, so I was happy.
We were good and did a cool down jog and stretched. I made sure that I went for a long walk later today, which helped a lot. I feel tired but I don't feel all that sore. All in all, it has been a great day's exercise and a great weight loss day too. Having written all this down, I think I will go down to the gym for half an hour. (In case you haven't noticed, I get a little obsessive about the walking challenge.)
EDIT: Half an hour on the treadmill plus walk to and from the gym. Today's step count - 34035. With 7.8 km of cycling, adjusted to 36066.
This morning it wasn't as cold when I ventured out on my bike. There was no sign of rain either. I made it to Lennox Gardens in 25 mins, which is my usual time, but I wasn't quite as stressed today. The ride home seems much easier as there's daylight involved, which reduces the chances of me running into something. Mind you, there are more people around when I ride through town, but that's a small part of the ride. Most of the time I'm on bike paths where I only have to worry about inanimate objects and the occasional jogger.
I'm not sure what to call this morning's session. It was an exercise circuit I guess. We were running around a rectangle, inside which were a number of activities. These included running inside ladders, jumping along a set of cones, running back and forth and putting shuttlecocks in cones, weaving in and out between cones and jumping back and forth inside a pentagon. After our warmup, which evolved from a walk to a mini version of the interval training from Tuesday (jog the short side, surge the long side), we split into two groups. One group jogged the long ends, sprinted the short ends while the other group did an activity in the middle for 2 minutes. We kept swapping over until we'd done them all and then repeated the set more intensely for 1 minute at a time.
It was fun, although I wasn't at all keen on the jumping. I know that plyometrics are supposed to be good for me, but I am quite happy to 'skip' them. (Pun intended.) My attitude today was a lot more positive. I think that's because I realised on Tuesday that we weren't being compared to each other. Intellectually I knew that but I lived it on Tuesday. Having been the slow runner and clumsy catcher who was always picked last for team sports at school, it's reassuring that I can be successful in this group situation.
Again, we were all worn out at the end of the session. The mood in the group is incredibly positive. People are enjoying the challenge so much. While we were out there it was getting colder and colder. When we arrived there was a little evidence of frost. When we did our cool down jog we were crunching our way across frost patches all over the place. Luckily, we were all warm by then.
At lunchtime, I participated in the ABS fun run with some of the women who are doing the GCC with me. It was a 7.3 km run around Lake Ginnindera. I haven't been around that lake before, so it was unknown territory. I didn't expect to run as fast as I did for the Mother's Day Classic, mainly because I'd worn my legs out twice during the week, so I was aiming to get round in 50 mins. I had a super soft target of one hour as well.
I have no idea how fast I'm running as yet, and I discovered that I'd covered the first km in 6:15. I tried to slow down, but I reached the 2 km mark in 12:32. By that stage I decided to start my 1 min walking / 3 min running approach. I was feeling tired already, and I figured that it would be silly to keep running at that pace. Kris, who was running with me, headed off on her own, and I settled in to work on getting to the end. I got to 3 km in 19:45 and to 4 km in 26:xx but I slowed down a lot after that. I missed the 5 km mark and was really struggling to run. Some of my 3 min intervals were lucky to get to the 1:30 mark. I kept going though, and I made it to the finish line in the official time of 49:04. This is just under 6:45 pace, and was inside my 50 minute mark, so I was happy.
We were good and did a cool down jog and stretched. I made sure that I went for a long walk later today, which helped a lot. I feel tired but I don't feel all that sore. All in all, it has been a great day's exercise and a great weight loss day too. Having written all this down, I think I will go down to the gym for half an hour. (In case you haven't noticed, I get a little obsessive about the walking challenge.)
EDIT: Half an hour on the treadmill plus walk to and from the gym. Today's step count - 34035. With 7.8 km of cycling, adjusted to 36066.
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