Bit nippy out there (#Janathon Day 16)

Oh the weather outside is frightful
But the fire is so delightful
And since we've no place to go
Let It Sn... Oh wait - I haven't done any exercise yet!

The temperature hasn't been above freezing all day and the canal is still frozen over. I did think that going for a run along the towpath would be nice as at least I'd be able to get some nice photos, but I then remembered that I couldn't go out until Stellian got home from work, at which time it'd be dark. This being the case, I decided to head off gym. Not before having an argument with iTunes though. I thought I'd put some new music onto my iPhone to work out to... except it wouldn't transfer from my computer, even after I'd disconnected it and reconnected it a couple of times. I removed the whole playlist. The computer said that was fine, my phone didn't. I deleted the playlist from my phone, so the computer deleted the whole playlist and I had to start all over again. If that wasn't enough, the kids decided they were going to have one of their silly evenings

Fortunately, it wasn't too busy at the gym and I worked up quite a bit of a sweat during my session. I was particularly pleased that I beat my best time for rowing 2 kilometres by almost 20 seconds.

An article was retweeted into my twitter timeline this afternoon entitled "Running, resolutions and reality". It makes for a good read - so take a look!


Running:
Distance - 2.19 miles
Time - 26m48

Rowing Machine:
Distance - 1.24 mile
Time - 9m 23


Exercise Bike:
Distance - 4.79 miles
Time - 16m 42


Total today:
Distance - 8.22 miles
Time - 52m 53

Janathon:
Total Distance - 135.12 miles
Total Time - 20h 04m 38

Half time (#Janathon day 15)

Trying to fit in time for exercise today was always going to be a challenge as there wasn't a lot of time between Stellian coming home and having to take G to Brownies, so the only thing to do was to go on the exercise bike. S played nicely on his DS (Super Mario Bros by the sound of it) whilst I got on with a quick 20-minute (ish) workout.


Total today (all on Exercise Bike):
Distance - 7 miles
Time - 21m 24


Janathon:
Total Distance - 126.90 miles
Total Time - 19h 11m 45

So here's a breakdown of my Janathon total at the half-way mark, (which I have now keyed into runningfreeonline)

Walking: 16.48 miles in 5 hours 06:29
Running: 28.17 miles in 5 hours 35:47
Cycling: 68.27 miles in 3 hours 51:39
Cross Trainer (Elliptical): 9.21 miles in 1 hour 34:42
Rowing: 2.48 miles in 19 minutes 34
Swimming: 2.29 miles in 1 hour 47:34
Other (Wii): 56 minutes.

I anticipate the second half of Janathon to be harder than the first as my body gets tireder from exercise already done plus being at work as well, but I'm determined I'm going to get there!

Motivation - #Janathon Day 14

It snowed overnight. Usually, I don't mind the snow, but the snow we had was a bit rubbish.

A light dusting that covers everything makes everything look nice. A deeper snow enables snowballs, snowmen and snow angels. This was somewhere inbetween. It had settled on the grass and on the cars, but it had stubbornly forgotten to cover the paths or the roads. My warning to the kids to be careful when walking as it would be slippery was barely out before I slipped on some ice and only just managed to keep myself from falling over.

By the time the afternoon school run came round, it was no longer snowing. After a long period of being dry and sunny, whilst I was in the office it was time for the rain to fall. This was not good for my motivation since it was dark outside and I find myself motivated to exercise best when I'm forced to leave the house. If I use the bike at home, there's the guilt factor involved in being able to hear the children misbehaving and Stellian getting stressed and thinking I should do something to help instead of carrying on cycling. (They're not bad kids, they just have their moments and I think they're still settling back into their school routine at the moment).

If I go out running, then once you go out somewhere, you've got to get yourself back, so you might as well push yourself and if you're using the gym or the pool, you're spending money so want to be good value for what you've spend. And so I took myself off to the gym even though I wasn't sure what kind of mood I was in activity-wise.

The gym was extremely busy when I got there and so my workout was pretty much dictated by what was free, so much so, that I spent quite a bit of time looking around thinking 'if I get off this (insert apparatus here) what can I go on. It was clear other people had similar ideas as I'd no sooner got off the treadmill than someone else had jumped on. Otherwise, there's not much to say about my workout really - I got sweaty and worked hard.

Two weeks of Janathon have now been completed (yay!) I'm sorely tempted to treat myself to one of the council's gold leisure cards when I get paid at the weekend, which'll save me money for the rest of Janathon. I'm just worried that I won't use it as much once February comes around (especially since Stellian's got a girly weekend booked in).


Running:
Distance -2.49 miles
Time - 28m 42


Cross Trainer (Elliptical):
Distance - 2.52 miles
Time - 25m 52

Exercise Bike:
Distance - 7.82 miles
Time - 26m 11


Total today:
Distance - 12.83 miles
Time - 1h 20m 45

Janathon:
Total Distance - 119.90 miles
Total Time - 18h 50m 21
Miles remaining - 5.1

Early morning swim (#Janathon Day 13)

I don't think I have ever got up solely because I wanted to do some exercise.

Today looked like it was going to be a busy day and so I wasn't entirely sure when I was going to be able to fit some exercise in.

Inspired by Stellian getting out of bed yesterday to go swimming as it opened, I decided this was a good idea.

On stepping outside, however there was a thick layer of frost on the neighbours cars so I was glad I'd put the windscreen protector on Stellian's car when I parked it last night. Otherwise, I'd have lost a good proportion of my exercise time defrosting the window.

To say I got to the pool at the schedule opening time, I was surprised to see that there were some people already in the water. Anyone who gets there early obviously wants to swim and everyone was doing lengths, however as time passed the pool started to fill up.

I had originally thought about doing blocks of strokes and did 20 lengths breast stroke quite happily before moving onto backstroke. Three laps into that, however, I encountered a problem. Although I was swimming in a straight line and was sure my way was clear when I started the length, I managed to hit two different swimmers who were slowly doing breast stroke. After a quick apology, I went back to breast stroke myself so I could play dodgems if I needed to.

Mmmm - pies!

I wanted to get out of the pool about 9 to enable me to get home and changed. As I got close, I was around 61/62 laps. I knew I was well over a kilometre and was hoping to complete a mile. I worked out that 70 laps wouldn't be enough, but 80 would take me over both in distance and time-wise. Unfortunately, I was unable to work out which lap would take me over the mile mark. I therefore stopped at 70, got dried off and worked it out. 73 was the magic number, but that'll have to wait for next time.

Usually, I'm pretty good with my food. Stellian is doing weightwatchers so cooks decent food to help us lose weight. (Yesterday she made home-made pies from the Hairy Dieter's cookbook and they were delicious)!

However, today I was hungry. When our church does Messy or Cafe church, food is provided and today it was sausage baps. They were too good to resist and I demolished 3! I fear that's undone all my good work this morning!

From there it was onto the delights of a warehouse which contains one of the local soft play areas. You'd have thought that exercise followed by a warm church, eating hot sausage sandwiches and mugs of tea would have warmed me up. It was freezing! I took my coat off as I sat down and had to put it back on again within a couple of minutes!

I love soft play areas, they're a great way for kids to blow off steam, particularly when the weather's rubbish. Anyone who wanted to go on Fun House but never got the chance can now enjoy 'helping' their little darlings around a particularly tricky part of the play area (making sure you take the longest way in and out for maximum enjoyment).

A whole lot of fun, but no prizes to be won

I also hate soft play areas, especially when they get overcrowded. It makes it very difficult to keep an eye on the children. OK so the front door is monitored so they can't get out, and they'll find you if they want something (drink, loo or TLC because a ball has hit them on the nose). But I've lost count of the amount of times I've had to extract them from a birthday party they haven't been invited to (luckily always before they've started eating!)

We were there as S had been invited to a friend's birthday party. Despite a couple of protests when he claimed to be full, he did eat most of his lunch. Getting S to eat is not normally a problem, but I caught him sneaking another Sausage bap at Messy Church after I'd told him "No more" so I was worried he wouldn't be able to eat anything.

The afternoon wasn't as hectic as the morning had been and Stellian took herself off to the gym for a bit. This made me feel that perhaps I hadn't done enough exercise for the day, so when she got back, I took myself down to the bike. My heart wasn't in it to tell you the truth and I didn't set out with either a time or distance goal in mind nor did I set any resistance. In the end, I covered 5 miles in a 16 and a half minutes, but that definitely is it for today now.

Swimming:
Distance - 0.96 miles
Time - 44m 08

Freezing Play Areas: 1
Sausage Baps: 3

Swimming:
Distance - 5.00 miles
Time - 16m 30

Total today:
Distance - 5.96 miles
Time - 1h 00m 38

Janathon:
Total Distance - 107.07 miles
Total Time - 17h 29m 36
Miles remaining - 17.93

Standard Saturday #Janathon Day 12

Getting back on track (graph produced by runkeeper)

I meant to tell you yesterday how I'd got on weighing in. Well, I lost 3.5lbs, which is pretty much where I was before Christmas and I thought I'd have a look at a graph to see how I'd done in 2012. In the main, pretty good, however my lowest weight was at the end of November at 203lbs (14st 7lb), so I still have a couple of lbs to go to get back down to that level. Part of the problem (aside from the build up to Christmas) was that when you only put a little on, and you know you've not been as good as you should, you can think you've got away with it and that's OK. Accepting that result week after week is how it can start to go against you again and I've no desire to be 17 stone again trying to squeeze into trousers with a 40" waist to avoid buying 42".

I was woken this morning by Stellian opening the curtains and telling me it was snowing. She promptly took herself off to the swimming pool and by the time I came downstairs S was dancing around singing about the snow and asking if we could make snowballs! Unfortunately, the snow was just light flakes swirling around but not sticking and even this had finished before it was time for their tennis lesson.

Like last week, Kids + tennis = adults + gym. I decided a 10 minute stint on quite a few pieces of equipment would be the best way to exercise today (excluding warm up and warm down). I decided to revisit the rowing machine for only the second time this month. It was a big rocky as I couldn't find somewhere comfortable for my iPhone to sit. In the end, I took it off. Exercising without music felt very strange as it didn't really feel like I got into a rhythm. Although I was slower than last time, I still completed 2k in under 10 minutes.

Today's exercise takes me over 100 miles for the month - almost feels like it's a new achievement every day. Hopefully taking my weight under 200lbs isn't that far away.

Running:
Distance -1.45 miles
Time - 16m 20

Rowing Machine:
Distance - 1.24 mile
Time - 9m 52

Cross Trainer (Elliptical):
Distance - 1.00 mile
Time - 9m 55

Exercise Bike:
Distance - 4.24 miles
Time - 15m 10


Total today:
Distance - 7.93 miles
Time - 51m 17

Janathon:
Total Distance - 101.11 miles!
Total Time - 16h 28m 58
Miles remaining - 23.89

A late lunch and a pair of wet socks - #Janthon Day 11

The picturesque walk to work

Apologies if you've seen half a blog today. I started writing it on the train this morning and hit publish as opposed to save as a draft.

At work, I do four short days (Monday-Thursday) so I can do the school run and a long day on a Friday. Even before Christmas, I had started to take my running gear with me on a Friday so I could take some time out of the office during my lunch break. Bleary eyed, I duly packed up my running stuff and set off for the station.

When do you start to write your blog posts? For some reason, my brain wants to try and compose my random ramblings at the point when I'm least able to record them - when I'm actually exercising! Today, although I was half asleep, my brain was starting to blog on the walk to the train (which explains the cock up on the train).

Gas Street Basin

The walking elements of my exercise today consist of my journey to and from the station. If you were watching Great British Railway Journeys yesterday, you would have seen Michael Portillo standing on Dudley Port station looking at his Bradshaw diary, no doubt trying to film in between the regular Virgin Trains that hammer past the very small station which is essentially a slab of concrete in between the two tracks. Despite my tiredness, I did remember to turn RunKeeper OFF before I got on the train (I have forgotten before only to be reminded a couple of hundred yards down the line when you get the audio update of your split times through your headphones).

On arrival at Birmingham New Street, it's a short walk to Brindleyplace where the office is located. My preferred route is through The Mailbox and along the canal towpath (surprise surprise). It's just nice to get that extra bit of peace and quiet before rejoining the hustle and bustle of city and office life.

You can never tell how busy you're going to be when you come back into the office after Christmas - not helped by a couple of colleagues hinting on facebook that a decision had been made they weren't happy about. On arriving at the office, I found there were only going to be about 6 people on my team (usually there are at least 10), so I knew it was going to be a busy one. The 'decision' was unexpected, but is at least logical and there's nothing to do but make the best of it. At least no job losses are required. For 2013, I'm adopting and modifying slightly the prayer of serenity as far as work is concerned:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference." In the absence of wisdom keep your gob shut - or at least think before you speak!

Usually, I try and take lunch around 12pm, however with staffing levels and meetings, this was impossible, so I grabbed a bite to eat and then went to lunch at 2.15pm. It was quite a nice day outside and I had completely forgotten that it had rained recently. The towpath around the National Indoor Arena is nice and solid, however as you start to make your way out of the city, the surface is uneven enough to make lots of frequent puddles. In my dozy state this morning, I hadn't picked up a spare pair of socks so I was really trying to avoid puddles. At one point I wondered whether I was running, skipping or dancing as my stride was so uneven. Unfortunately, as hard as I tried, around the 1.75 mile mark, there were a couple of muddy puddles that were simply unavoidable so I was destined to spend the afternoon at my desk with wet socks.

Towards the end of my run, I realised that I was going to be a little short of 4 miles, so a quick change of route and a lap of Oozells Square completed my run and cleared my head for the afternoon. That's 15 hours of exercise done in Janathon so far and my 110 mile target looks like it should be easily met as I only need to average 0.84 of a mile each day. So I'm upping the target to 125 miles in total - something new to aim for!

Walking:
Distance - 2.67 miles
Time - 44m 25

Running: http://runkeeper.com/user/plockplock/activity/141309965
Distance - 4.02 miles
Time - 48m 45

Total today:
Distance - 6.69 miles
Time - 1h 33m 10

Janathon:
Total Distance - 93.18 miles
Total Time - 15h 37m41
Miles remaining - 31.82

 

They think it's all over... it is now (#Janathon day 10)

Tipton Swimming Centre

Tipton Swimming Centre - Interior

You'll be pleased to know that I'm talking about my holiday as opposed to quitting Janathon. My body is obviously getting ready to go back to work as I managed to sleep through the 06:00am and 07:00am alarms! (To be fair, I heard the one at 6, thought "That's loud" and went back to sleep again). If I don't get out of bed until 07.30am tomorrow like I did today I'm in trouble as I'll miss my train!

In sticking with my plan not to use the gym today, I checked the times for the swimming pool and was pleased to see that public swimming was 07:15am until 11:00am. Stellian was due to work from home today, so I convinced her, it would be a good start to the day to take a dip. She cleared it with her boss beforehand, but said that an hour would be the maximum she would be able to do without taking the mickey.

The plan was to drop the kids at school and then head straight to the pool, however Stellian got an urgent e-mail at just the wrong moment, which meant I dropped the kids off and then came back for her. It was pretty cold outside and I was suddenly questioning the wisdom of going swimming as the pool building is quite old and the changing rooms can get quite cold.

We arrived at 09:00am to be told that the swimming session would finish at 09:30am as there was a school group coming in to use the pool. This posed a dilemma as it was nowhere near the length of time we wanted, but I decided to go in anyway.

Yesterday, I had mentioned to Stellian that I could run home if I wanted to stay longer than she did. The temperature this morning, led me to question the wisdom of this decision, however I made sure I had all my running gear with me to keep my options open. The decision was promptly made for me when Stellian decided that 30 minutes wasn't really going to be a benefit and that she was taking the car home to get on with some work.

With only half an hour to play with, I decided to go for it - as many laps as I could get in within the allotted time. The pool felt busier than the other day and there were a fair amount of side-to-side-ers, which made doing lengths quite tricky. Every so often I'd come across a mobile chicane as the person in my way wasn't there when I started the length. Doing breast stroke, I looked at my watch as I passed 19 laps (the 400m that I did as a part of the triathlon swim the other day) and the time was showing roughly 11 and a half minutes, which is faster than I did last time. I decided to see how close I could get to 50 laps in half an hour. When I reached 32 lengths, it was looking distinctly unlikely, but fortunately, the pool was clearing. This gave me the opportunity to switch to front crawl. This was quite tiring, but was getting me closer to my target. At the end of every other length I'd check the clock and glance at the lifeguard to see whether I'd be told time was up. When they didn't, I'd set off again, giving backstroke a go to try and preserve some energy. As I reached the end of my 48th lap, my luck ran out and was asked to leave. (In the end, it was just as well as a class full of hyperactive boys came barrelling into the changing rooms just as I finished getting changed).

At Tipton, the new and old Birmingham mainline canals meet. This provides a variety of opportunities with regards to routes home, ranging from 1.3 miles to 2.98 miles. My iPhone was quoting the temperature outside at a balmy 1°C, so given I still had wet hair, I decided that the shortest distance would probably be best. It wasn't the most comfortable run I've done (which is clear from my pace - 13:10/mile), but it served its purpose (I got home)!

As a reward (and to warm me up), I nipped out to McDonalds to buy a couple of coffees. I swear she took her time to take my order at the drive through to give me enough time to look through the breakfast menu. I was good and resisted the urge to order a sausage and egg mcmuffin meal, remembering that Thursday evening is my weigh-in day. I'm just hoping to have lost weight this week given I put on last week.

The walking total may increase later if I decided to track this afternoon's pick up from school, but in case I don't I've still done over 2 miles today. Depending on how things go, I may need a new total mileage goal for Janathon as I've got less than 25 miles left and we're not halfway through the month yet!

15:33 Edited to add:
I had been looking at some of the local pubs online, but none of their menus were highlighting what healthy food they were service. We thought we'd try The Village in Dudley as we hadn't been for a while, but the prices were much higher than we wanted to pay for a lunch. In the end, we settled on Pizza Hut, which would be our main meal of the day. We both went for a Pizzetta (which was only 460 calories) and helped ourself to the salad bar whilst we were waiting. The unexpected bonus was that Stellian found an offer through Vouchercloud to get both our meals for the price of one. Result!

I was feeling rather full after that so the extra mile walking to get the kids from school both contributes to my Janathon total and starts to work off a delicious lunch. Hopefully the scales will be kind later!

Walking:
Distance - 1.38 miles
Time - 24m 27

Running: 
Distance -1.3 miles
Time - 17m 11

Swimming:
Distance - 0.65 miles
Time - 29m 04

Total today:
Distance - 3.33 miles
Time - 1h 10m 42

Janathon:
Total Distance - 86.49 miles
Total Time - 14h 04m 31
Miles remaining - 23.51

Acknowledgement:
Photograph of the interior of Tipton Swimming Centre taken from http://www.slt-leisure.co.uk/leisure-centre/tipton-swimming-centre