Bloggers no more - retiring some blogs from my blog roll :-(

Photo Stuart Miles. FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Stock photo - Image ID: 100258862

Looking at my blog I realised that there are links to some blogs that look quite dated and haven't been updated in a long while. I go long periods between posts but this handful look to have properly come to natural ends.

So these are blogs I used to read but that have sadly stopped posting for over 2 years :

2 Slow 4 Boston - used to be an active and creative blog that I found a little late in its run. Jon even went to the trouble of producing a database for run bloggers that aimed to connect the community in the USA (and elsewhere). The blog though no longer updated after 3 years remains a fun read, with plenty of pitcures, charts, and chat.

La corredora - Clara, a self confessed lazy ultrarunner was never lazy about the detail in her posts. Engaging reads and a flavour of the longer run life, stopped posting 2 years ago (having blogged for 5 years).

beyond DESTINATION 26.2 - a fun and often high energy blog that came to a halt for incredibly sad and thus entirely understandable reasons. I do hope that Linz's world is now more settled and that her family are all well - her last post was titled "Life..."  Have a look back through at some fun stuff, including some interesting smoothie recipes.

Fit Goddess - adept at race reports with pictures (something I have failed at many times in the past), and with a lovely sense of fun I found this blog a bit late too. Always an uncluttered and easy read, a shame Theia didn't keep things going.

Morning Runner - looking at the four blogs above, this follows a similar pattern - started in 2008, enjoyed a posting boom, and then sadly petered out (final post). This blog followed Jen, a former college athlete, in her running adventures and the challenges / fun of balancing life - work - training - races. Like any of the previous four it is well worth poking around the blog archive for some gems of wisdom (and recipes - not that thats all I look out for).

I am off to look for new running / run fitness blogs to read and include... I am hoping the trend of dead blogs on my blog roll isn't indicative of a complete move away from long form blogging to the 'microblog' worlds of Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, et al.??

If "FollowFriday / #FF" was still a thing, and these blogs were active, I would have had these as mine today.

Runaround! Now!

A friend has started a new blog about his experiences with running, training, racing, and all the things he gets up to in the world of fitness. I have been enjoying a read, and if you find this you might like to go look too...  http://www.runaround.london

I have to say that I love the title to the blog - Runaround! - a simple statemnet which sums up so nicely what a lot of us spend our spare time doing :-)

One post titled "Running Form" really has made me think, in it Karl outlines his adventures with a Kinetic Revolution run clinic. His experience was extremely positive and has even seemingly produced a half-marathon PB at the Bournemouth Marathon Festival recently. The journey through changes in running form and technique is one that I hope to emulate this winter, as a result I am checking when there is a clinic session running nearby so I too can avail myself of some useful insights.

WoW: Racing nervous? I can recommend a blog post for that

Rather than wittering on Wednesday I have swapped in a recommendation Wednesday (which isn't as catchy, but might be more informative).

I saw this post by Amanda on her blog / website RunToTheFinish this week....

9 Best Ways to Manage Race Day Nerves 

My most noticeable race day nervous sign is yawning! I start to yawn to get more oxygen probably as a result of not being very relaxed in the start pen. Those around me must think I've either just popped out of bed or actually find the whole race thing quite dull.

While I'm at this recommending thing an older post that caught my eye a while back that encompasses a lot of what Amanda's blog is about...

61 Lessons from 2000 Blog Posts 

Some blogs are just a mine of information, advice, good vibes, and so are worth recommending.

I am finding my way back into my blog after quiet a while away, and trying to find a bit of computer / life balance. So my next mission is to track down some images to brighten the place up again.

The Wednesday Witter

I have had to change the title of my occasional (sometimes even regular) weekly waffle, it seems that 'Wittering on Wednesday' might be just fine but by shortening that to 'WoW' on a blog which is for the most part about exercise 'WoW' may cause some small confusion with the cross-fitters version of 'WoW' - "Workout of the Week". No confusion was intended, not that anyone finding one of my WoW posts would be in any doubt after reading two lines or so.

With all that said this Wednesday's witter seems like me to be suffering from fatigue, I have been getting on the move of late hoping to sort out an injury, and it seems the extra workload is tiring me out. I will take some time to adjust to the new routine, and this much I have learned during my blogging days - you do adapt to new routines and habits quicker than you think (once you get past the initial resistance). So for me that is the exciting prospect of early nights to help the tiredness while I adjust and settle.

I have been busier with this blog nonsense of late (as my wife pointed out), and whether this is because I'm living out my running vicariously at the moment, or a genuine deep seated need to write stuff down, I am not entirely sure. Anyway it turns out I am usually at my most prolific in August (see my swiftly constructed graphic below), so perhaps this year I am just blooming early - I blame the crazy weather.

Did I really? Well I never! - my average number of blog posts per month over the years 2006-2012

Have to say as a diary type blog the graph does confirm one of my paper diary trends that January always sets out with good intentions (!). Could be cruel and make some comment about consistency, but hey this is a blog about life and few lives are consistent (at least thats my defence) :-)

Sunny, warm, decent breeze, some Simpsons title sequence type clouds moving through - looks like a fine day for gardening and being outdoors.

For a few moments I thought this was the most viewed thing I'd written all month until I spotted two new referrer spams have taken up residence in my google stats. Thanks for your 'interest' spammers now go do something a little more worthwhile!!

Tuesday tightness - more power to the stretches

"Right, okay, right that's it!!"... I am going to go stretch crazy and from here on, I could well be found randomly at any time stretching. My knee has not responded at all well to my running on it, and was better for rolling and stretching yesterday before deciding to make it's big protest felt this morning. It used to be the case that I would go through a stretch routine a couple of times a day when I was rowing, then somewhere along the way I fell out of the habit.

Looking back on it the drop in stretching came initially when I managed to exacerbate a calve injury by over doing it, and then was compounded by reading those articles decrying certain forms of stretching before exercise (seems I must have subconsciously read it as "all stretching is bad" - dumbo!).

I will be bendier than a bendy Yoga person - ahem, perhaps not that bendy I am a lanky 6ft2 after all
"Silhouette Girls Doing Yoga" - Image courtesy of sattva / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So I am just going to stretch until I get all bendy again and hope that my knee decides shut up with the pain when it has everything around it super loose. I have to say that the very first time I went through my old routine again this morning I could feel tightness and pulling where I don't ever recall feeling any, which of course tells me something pretty major. My quads were like rocks and took the longest time to ease off under tension and I used to have great mobility through that stretch (it used to be the back of leg stretch that would leave me whimpering). Somewhere along the way an adaptation for the worse has happened and I need to put it right.

In a timely twist of fate an excellent blog that I read "50after40" posted a great video called 'Hip workout details and my first video' - which for a first ever video outing was awesome and contains some great moves that I hope to build into an expanded stretching / strengthening regimen. I reccomend you go take a look and enjoy the rock out to the soundtrack too :-)

Overcast, breezy, persistent rain, and a complete reverse of yesterdays weather. Now where is a quiet spot in the office I can go stretch?

Note - I should of course once again heed my own previous advice - 'Joys of stretch' - if I was so wise back in July 2011 what happened?

505's

I went and missed the 500th post on my blog and even then the 501st... which then led me to wait for post 505 for any kind of fanfare.

Why 505? Well way back when I was very large I went to the U.S. of A. and while there really wanted a pair of authentic 501's... suffice to say 505's proved to actually fit and I had to head home and hope no one looked to hard at the label of my fancy 'authentic' jeans. I was a much larger person back then and the compromise on clothes extended far beyond a single brand of denim jeans - back then before this blog started huge t-shirts, loose jackets, over sized jumpers were all things I had to compromise on. All little things that eventually penetrated my awareness and made me take the small steps and actions that put me on the road to a healthier and slimmer life*.

"Dude! Like anyone really cared anyway!" - why did the make or model even matter to my younger brain?

Happily things move on... ...so when I first clicked a link and clanked the keyboard on this blog I never for a moment considered that at some point in the future I would have written 500 let alone 505 blog posts. This is still pretty much a collection of thoughts and experiences, nothing more, nothing less than my stream of on-line / on the move consciousness.

505 posts in brief? Well, in the beginning there was running... then there was rowing and running... and then there was running (and some occasional rowing). There were successes, injuries, losses and gains over time that made my life as colourful as it is. It all started on Saturday August 27th 2005, and since then it seems my most popularly viewed post is a cartoon I drew of a circuit session we used to do when I was doing a lot of rowing training (Circuit dizziness).

All that has gone on over that time represents the largest personal journal I have produced (of any kind), and for whatever it is to anyone who finds it it is deeply special to me for that alone. I am aware this is a lazy post that contains no content, no solid opinion, no deep humour, no product review, no life enriching mantra... but then who knows what the next five hundred and five posts might contain.

* I never did buy a pair of 501 style jeans, it turned out the overall cut didn't look that great on my slimmer frame either - I am just not an owner of a suitable body geometry (there was probably something ironic in that somewhere?!?!).

A tale of two podcasts

The number of podcasts that I regularly listen to has now doubled, to the princely sum of two! Yes, that is right I now listen to literally a couple of podcasts. Which two and why?

The first one I have listened to for a while now (and have mentioned before) is the Jillian Michaels podcast - not because I'm a closet north american, not because I'm a huge Biggest Loser fan, and not because I am a woman of a certain age... just because it is generally silly, but informative, and benign whilst insightful. I am sure many people have said many things about the 'show' and I am certainly not going to critique it here.

The second one I have been downloading has been a revelation - Marathon Talk - for me at the moment simply perfect listening and simply perfect content. As someone hoping to run two marathons this year it has been a brilliant find for tips and training ideas / guides. The running advice is coupled with some absolutely brilliant interviews, and since I started listening over the New Year I have heard some crackers with Kelly Sotherton (former GB heptathlete trying her first marathon after retiring from elite sport), Mike Tomlinson (event organiser and husband of the late Jane Tomlinson), Amby Burfoot (RunnersWorld guru, and lifelong runner), Prof John Brewer (sports physiologist), Brett Larner (the guy behind Japan Running News), and Kurt Fearnley (paralympic athlete) this year, and I haven't begun dipping into their archive yet.

I have taken so much from the Marathon Talk podcasts that I would recommend a listen to any runner. It is true that the podcast it is supported / funded by Adidas but it is not by any means an ad driven enterprise it comes across as genuinely about running community, and the two hosts (Messrs Martin Yelling and Tom Williams) are warm and engaging. I have yet to find time to root around the website but I have the feeling that when I do it will be similarly rewarding.  

Both of these are available through iTunes just stick something relevant in the search do-da :-)

Diary - very busy in work (not a bad thing), very busy at home (also not a bad thing), not getting many miles out on the road (not a good thing). I'm 10lbs lighter than at the end of December, and moving towards fuller training. Weather - cold, windy, and possibly bringing more snow our way.

Wittering on Wednesday

Direction of travel

I have been reading a lot of posts on some great blogs of late admiring their clear senses of purpose, not simply with their running, but with their blogs themselves. There are those that diarise their activities so neatly they are compelling, some that give useful advice in amongst simple 'selling', and then there are those that are just down right entertaining. The direction of this collection of posts has always been somewhat eclectic, between rowing and running, between diary and advice, between reviews and new challenges, between weight loss log and training log. Why does this even bother me really? It is hard to put my finger on it, but I am coming to the opinion that I need to be a little firmer in what this thing actually is... maybe?!?!?

Driving tracks

As the Winter heads this way I am looking at some more time with my friend the elliptical trainer in the gym... even at this thought my brain said a loud "arrghh, must have distractions" and so I am on the hunt for new workout driving power tracks. Initial thoughts ranged around old favourites but a change up would be good so I went down the more current road towards Jay-Z, Tinie Tempah, Labrinth, David Guetta, Swedish House Mafia, et al... when I get to a new play list I will be sure to share. Any dance / pop / house / rap or other upbeat workout tune suggestions?

Wittering on Wednesday - including Tennis, legacy, heat, blogging and ice cream(!)

Special bit of wittering this Wednesday, Andy Murray has cracked it, in case you missed it (how could you) he won the US Open in a thrilling five set final against Novak Djokovic. The summer of shear joy for British sport just took another level step up, just when we all thought there was nowhere else it could go after Bradley Wiggins triumphed in the Tour de France, and the GB and NI team excelled during the London 2012 olympics. Phew, as a huge sports fan (aka TV sports-aholic) I am just about out of steam - I stayed up until gone 2am to hear Murray win on BBC radio.

Olympic bounce - local rowing legacy?

I ran into a former rowing colleague the other day who told me all about the apparent effect the Olympics has had on our local club, Llandaff Rowing Club. Each year an event called the "Pub and Club" is run which encourages teams of four from local workplaces, clubs and pubs to get together learn to row for a month culminating in the "Pub and Club sprint regatta". There were, I was told, queues down the stairs and out of the clubhouse door coupled with cars parked all over the place apparently during the initial sign up evening. As an event I know they will love it, it was my introduction to rowing and left me totally hooked.

Any sign of an Olympic 2012 legacy, or an inspire a generation, sports effect near you?

Bring the heat

I am trying, and I am not sure how I am doing, to mix up my running a little. Yeah I know my training log looks pretty much as it always has, but it belays a change in approach which is seeing more speed-work. For me speed-work is a relative term of course (closes mind to how fast the Olympians covered such distances), but having spent a very very long time running at and just below 10min/mile pace for greater and greater distances I have needed the change and gone looking for it. At the moment it is not especially structured with me doing one session a week (at a mid-range distance) with sprints or sustained bursts within it. Like I said I don't know how I am doing but I am certainly less 'bored' with working my way around every course at 10min per mile.

Wales Blogger awards

I have seen on other blogs mentions of the awards for Welsh bloggers (I first noticed it on the very professional http://www.girlontheriver.com/ blog via my twitter feed), unfortunately I don't read enough of them to give a real judgement about their merits but the short-list is a fun way of taking the temperature of blogs in this part of the World. Some I think will be retained as regular reads - more on those in another WoW perhaps.

Take a browse of the 'Peoples choice' nominees list if you like at http://www.walesblogawards.co.uk/peoples-choice-award/

Swansea next...

Not long now until I tackle the Swansea Bay 10k. I have to say I am looking forward not only to the course and a lovely day out by the sea with Mrs. Taffi but I am also looking forward to my Joe's Ice Cream. This is a family thing inspired by my wife's love of the ice cream that they concocted in their ice cream parlours, when we go to Swansea or the Mumbles (or anywhere vaguely close actually) we have to 'pop' in for an ice cream. Very good stuff it is too, and I am looking forward to a well earned scoop or three ;-)

Diary - sunny, shattered showers, modest breeze. I am feeling inspired by all things running at the moment, and reading loads of great blogs and magazine articles. Job interview later - which should be fun.

More post-Olympic blog posts

It appears that as the 'dust' settles on the London Olympics more and more competitors have been able to take stock and take a perspective on their efforts. They are a mix of honest, reflective, philosophical view points, here is another that caught my attention...

Annabel Vernon in her BBC support blog posted this reflection on her Olympic experience of both London and Beijing (fifth in the 8+ in London, silver in the 4-), and though claiming to be confused she eloquently conveys the trials, tribulations, efforts, joys, lows and highs of high level rowing. Moreover the effects I suppose of making competition sport your life / career.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/annabelvernon/2012/09/proud_and_confused_-_but_thats.html

Diary: very pleasantly warm, high scattered cloud, cooling breeze, very chilly overnight. Later I should complete my last pre-Cardiff10k run. Received an offer of an job interview today so I am pleased, but unsure where it might lead (not my first choice of direction). Grateful for my beautiful family and their continued support (including silly kitchen dancing).

Sad tale of 'sad' sites hiding in the blogger stats

I wouldn't say that I hang on the every click, but I do check the blogger stats page when I log in to get a feel if there is anybody out there (no, not in an alien way - or was that just me drifting off into other uses of that phrase?). Of late I had been pretty pleased with myself because through the year I have had a pretty regular (though not huge) monthly count... only I have discovered the vast majority were probably eronious sites trawling for some kind of business. I am not going to give the site names here as it is really just to give them a little more oxygen to breath if I do, but I will pass on a little info that I found.

The basic message is IF YOU SEE STRANGE ADDRESSES OR LINKS IN YOU BLOGGER STATS DON'T CLICK THEM, which of course is a fairly applicable mantra for large parts of the web. If you really want to know where these 'visiters' are coming from put a piece of the address only into a search engine and you'll see a site synopsis (again don't click through) or perhaps a forum article where other web users have described their experiences with the erroneous site/s.

How does it work? Well apparently low hit blogs are targeted as we are more likely to see the links and follow them back to source, bigger more popular blogs lose these in the tens, hundreds or thousands of genuine visitors if the sites even bother stinging them.

What harm? Well here I have to say I am not entirely sure, I get the impression they just want the afore mentioned web oxygen (people visiting their sites so they get sponsor monies). There may be sites that have more 'viscous' intentions though so all the more reason to follow the mantra.

Funnily enough from what I read third party sites that track your traffic for you are better able to give truer stats as they don't see or register them. These links are, in a sad way, for bloggers eyes only and for bloggers to fall foul of if they think "oh, that's cool a new site has me listed in another country wonder if they list many sites like mine?" and then click through to them.

I can only really refer to these sites as 'sad' - if the sleaze (and yes it is often 'those' sites) can't generate enough traffic from the titillating garbage they contain from genuinely interested nutters then just what they gain from a few earnest bloggers tripping into their traffic stream I can't fathom. Some parts of the Internet amaze and inspire, other parts well mmmm, just depress the average human being.

Diary - sunny, windy, high broken cloud. Rest day from training. I am happy that I might have avoided the above nonsense, and hope any real readers don't get stuck in these traps. Although unhappy that it seems that the little bit of fun in the stat page reports has completely gone.

Wittering on Wednesday

Thanks to being under par over the last week and more I seem to have come across at least some wittering material...

Really, who knew? 200+ hits on one post...
My blog post and moreover it's cartoon image - "Circuit Dizziness!?!?!" - has had 200+ visits. This is easily  more than twice the visits of any other page or post on my humble 'ickle blog! I can only hope that everyone who finds it likes it, and maybe if they 'borrow' it are proper enough to credit the author / artist ;-)

Funny that the oddest things you 'do' in a blog get noticed, and the more profound stuff that you might write with some sort of audience in mind sails off into web land never to be clicked again. Just goes to show you never can tell.

Sports viewing philosophy?...

My two punts for finalists at Roland Garros went south, both Andy Murray (losing to David Ferrer 6-4, 6-7, 6-3, 6-2) and Sam Stosur (losing to Sara Errani 7-5, 1-6, 6-3) went out before the final (quarter and semi stages respectively). Darn it, I shouldn't have watched the matches... classic viewers curse - if a sporting event takes place in a forest and is around to watch it does anyone actually lose?

It is notable as another example that my football team always seem to score when I leave the sofa for a comfort break. Perhaps team GB should facilitate me to not view (i.e. pay me not to watch) the upcoming Olympics so that they can convert all those medal opportunities they keep telling us about?

It's all in a name...

Last Thursday evening I watched the Diamond League Athletics meet on BBC TV and very much enjoyed that fast bloke running like a Bolt over 100m, but couldn't help but notice another perhaps not so aptly named athlete - Chaunte Lowe the 'high' jumper (I bet no ones ever pointed that out to her before, ahem!).

And finally...
In the course of being ill I have read the odd blog more than normal and listened to an extra podcast (and watched some tennis - ahem, see above) here and there I have come across three separate 'articles' about forefoot running, it's mechanics, benefits and so forth. Awareness of the subject has gotten to a threshold in my brain where I might begin to entertain giving it a go when I get running again. Oh the power of repeated information! I wonder just how easy the conversion really is?

Poorly poorly boy

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
"Malaise" by graur razvan ionut

I have a chest infection / cough / cold that won't shift, it has left me grumpy and tired (not too different from normal in the opinion of some perhaps!). My training buddy and I did 8 miles on Sunday, but my lungs were not happy at any point really. The rest of the weekend was busy, busy, busy,... though I did catch my fair share of the Jubilee and French Open tennis on TV ;-)

The rest of this week looks like a fitness write off, thanks to the lurgy. I hope to get out on a run this weekend, as I have conceded to buy cough syrup despite my reservations about the stuff. Fingers-crossed though it will do something and get me back on track.

By the way if you want to read a more intelligent and considered post today I can strongly recommend someone else's blog post... Top 3 reasons running is bad for you (or not) written by a super blogger in the blog "Shut up + Run".

PS. cough medicine update - I feel worse already having taken some an hour ago... I am not a good patient :-S

Feel fantastic Friday

There we are I finally plotted my monthly weight chart to include this year so far (my Weight page), and it looks good. I am pleased that the drop down to around 14 stone has stuck. There were a few years of oscillating around 15 stone that whilst much better than my start point was not especially where I wanted or needed to get to. Truth be told I would like to oscillate more around the low 13 stone mark and that is now a major target for this year taking in aspects of what worked well towards the end of last year.

Taken from my weight page

In other news... sometime soon I really must, must, must make myself make major modifying (momentarily mostly maybe) manipulating, manufacturing musings / missives, managing multi-word menageries moving away from alliterative blog post titles ;-)  [a more contrived sentence you will not see on the Internet today (outside a tabloid news site)].

Wittering on Wednesday - thread catch up

Jillian Micheals podcast - I am still 'with the program' so to speak, and still downloading the podcast. It has a sister video (YouTube) cast but that doesn't fit well with my time. I shove it in my ears while going about things and listen to all things motivation, health and fitness - with a hefty chunk of nuttiness, life musing, and random stuff thrown in. Am I still going to recommend it? Well yes, it is good radio. It is loaded with feminine outlook and why not (?), but hey the advice woven through it is worth the investment all by itself (it's not as if the very feminine view of life is not worthy all of itself). I think you will probably understand what I am trying to carefully express there, either that or I just dug a good sized male faux pas hole that I should leap into now?!?!

The material is good, it is researched (though sometimes I wonder who writes the material they discuss - strange 'science' out there in the health industry realm), it is good humoured, heartfelt stuff, and hey I like it... even if middle aged, vaguely sporty, European dudes was not their intended target market ;-)

The 366 Random Acts of Kindness guy - is still going strong and moreover still blogging strong (more power to him). It is beginning to boggle me just how he will keep coming up with things to do, he has passed the third of the way there and is going strong. The acts are deceptively simple - for example in one act he sought to research and track down a guy handling out laminated signs to the homeless so that he too could share in the same acts of kindness. I still maintain it is simple genius.

The Ultimate Olympian challenge guy from way back did not appear to pick up the baton again, I keep looking and hoping but it seems the blog is gathering electronic tumble weeds. The challenge he set himself was superb - to try all of the designated Olympic sports in within the four year cycle between the Athens and Beijing games. It was certainly a herculean task for charity and I had thought was going well, whatever the reasons he gave up I wish him all the best.

Note of blogs - Blogs of note I have noticed don't include many sports / health blogs in the blogs of note 'hall of fame' on blogger. It generally is the simple genii blogs or the aesthetically sweet blogs that make it, but I would argue that there are some genius and artistic sporting and heath blogs out there. Okay so perhaps they don't want to be seen to endorse a particular thread of health practice / therapy, but there are plenty of very good looking running sites out there for example. The blog "I'd rather be eating" is brilliant not only for editorial but for the quality of the images and blog organisation. Don't worry I am not making a strange pitch for my back of a postcard blog here, I am just saying they could cast the net a little more widely at some well presented sporting blogs, much followed blogs like "Miss Zippy" et al.

Here I step off the soapbox lest my wittering be mistaken for ranting.  I am off to clean up and update some pages gathering their own tumble-weeds round my blog ;-)

Blue skies, light showers, brisk breeze.

Wittering on Wednesday

My web discovery of the week was http://www.wordle.net/ which takes a piece of text or website and spins it into an awesome and very clever pictogram. Below is one generated from this very blog:-

Many minutes (or perhaps hours) of task avoiding fun with Wordle

There are plenty of things I could witter about from twitter, Olympic news, running articles, etc. but to be honest I am not feeling the out and out wittering love just now as I am still fatigued from the weekend. I have started my race report from my first ever marathon and will put it up as soon as I sort a couple of images. So essentially in summary little 'wittering on Wednesday' today, strong chances of wittering in coming posts :-D

Very overcast, light breeze, relatively mild.

Where was wittering Wednesday?

Ah, Wednesday was a work-related conference day and so I only had my smart phone as a form of computing power all day (plus I hadn't pre-prepared a wittering draft to hop on and post). So it is Thursday and I can happily report my Wednesday away from any computer was well spent. A very well organised event held my attentions all day and in fact still is on my mind (it was a careers event, just to put you in the picture a little).

This little blog doesn't have an acronym for Thursday's, despite there being some good ones around the blogosphere I simply don't tend to blog on a Thursday - just routine weekly routine I guess... so anyway wittering... two people that I know completed the Paris marathon over the weekend just gone, and both under 4hrs!

I am pleased for them, and  a little jealous too (one did it in 3:54, the other 3:22!). Truth be told when my brain is not otherwise engaged (in conversation, work, sleeping, etc.) my thoughts are never far from marathons at the moment - sad, but true. In just over 10days I will have to find something else to blog about...... rowing (!), you see in fact I have already decided that once my first marathon effort is over I am going to spend my summer rowing...

...and quietly training for a half-marathon PR, ssssh! 

More nonsense and training news soon.

PS. welcome to the visitors I reportedly (I never quite believe the stats widget) had from Brisbane, AU; Melbourn, GB; Auckland, NZ; Bristol, GB; Somerton, GB; Nottingham, GB; Uttoxeter, GB; Mountain View, California, US; Hartlepool, GB - some nice new destinations in the list for the last week :-)

Very overcast, occasional showers, cold in the firm breeze.

Wittering on Wednesday ...(2)

More outdoor
Last night I attended my fourth session with the Outdoor Fitness crew and wow was it tough! There were bunch of hill sprints with the usual spot exercises, and again some pairs work. All of this was good fun and again I met some lovely people. This morning though I ache like a very achy person, and wish I had taken myself off to my bed early. I have plans to go at least twice more (possibly trice more) this week - I figure aches on top of aches won't hurt as much, and happily my hip is not reacting to badly to the sessions.

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
It is all a little more than follow the leader, but this was the best image I could rapidly grab [I will investigate better ones]
 

In some ways I am wondering what next? In the four sessions I have attended I have 'experienced' four different trainers / leaders and so the variety has been pretty broad. It isn't possible to say which I have enjoyed more because aside from common themes they have all brought interesting and subtle twists. These being anything from how the interact to exercise style to different kinds of intensity. At the early stage of my block I am wondering where I could fit this into my week going forward beyond these six weeks and also beyond my marathon training block.

Podcast powered

There is something tempting about listening to a podcast or an audio book while training / running. The temptation of getting 'two for one' out your time is very appealing. I used to try and listen to crime thrillers in the gym several years ago, but found they struggled to compete with the background noise (even after I had invested in better headphones). In fact I usually enjoyed the plots better during the short walks to and from the gym, wherein each book seemed to last so long I lost the will to remember the threads of the stories. So personally I like the concept but have struggled a bit with getting a great deal out of it.

Image: Pixomar / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In the last week or two I caved into advertising and tried out the wisdom of Jillian Michaels podcast (free via apple's itunes istore, the most recent can be found at http://bit.ly/JillianMichaelsPodcast). Just so we're clear, the advertising came in the form of tweets and facebook comments from the eponymous Jillian after I clicked 'follow' and 'like' respectively. I tend to follow athletes and sports people as a form of living my sporting life vicariously, I am not ashamed to say that I am an avid sports watching fan (the Olympic period is always an absolute treat for me). Anyway I downloaded the podcast an dipped my toe into the world of American fitness and lifestyle tips and found it was actually pretty good. I don't mean it in a derisory way but it is just like listening to the radio but with topics that are generally more useful than which celebrity did what, when, with whom which you get between tracks on a lot of 'regular' radio stations. The banter is fun, the topics illuminating, and so I will be listening to more in the near term.

Music to exercise by?

When I do exercise with music I generally go loud and large, stuff like the Prodigy (heavy dance tracks), the King's of Leon, the Foo Fighters (driving rock), basically stuff that is real adrenaline fuel. I have never really found anything that I can run long distances to outdoors, the rhythms of a long run for me at least, haven't fitted my (albeit eclectic) music collection. As I have moved to higher mileage I have found that I need to listen to my rhythms, breathing, footfall, and even the noises my t-shirts make (?). So music with exercise has become for me very environment driven: indoor gym = music, outdoor run = no music, and perhaps I am not so very unique in doing this?

Motivation Monday

Just recently I re-read an old post which reinforced my motivations, that I wrote way back in 2005, called "The couch escape". It was interesting to read where I had been and very much where I hope to never be again. I find that a lot of my motivation comes from briefly remembering how things felt at my health low - very often it is simply remembering the effort I had to find to pick myself off the ski slope at my heaviest.

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The balance between feeling encouraged or discouraged really can be so easily tipped towards the positive with activity (getting out for a run, eating healthily, planning for a fun trip, chatting with a buddy about their / your efforts, etc.), but on other days it can slip all to swiftly towards the negative and feelings of discouragement. The day to day tends to make you forget just how far it is that you have already come and just how much you can achieve with the right motivations. It is at times like this that I look back to where the journey started and remind myself how much I've already achieved. Realising the great distance travelled in the right direction can be just that motivational nudge to keep me going down the healthy road and keep me 'on the move'.

PS. speaking of motivation... it is 26 days to go until I try and run 26 miles around Milton Keynes... I would be deeply grateful and spurred on if you could support one of my two choosen charities and please sponsor my madness...

The Huntington's Disease Association
http://www.justgiving.com/Andrew-Hollins-2012
&
Cancer Research UK
http://www.runningsponsorme.org/andrewhollins

Wittering on Wednesday

Daylight

With the conversion of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland across to BST (British Summer Time) this weekend just gone the whole day suddenly alters. The apparent arrival of longer lighter evenings open up the day to many options, in my life that is getting out and about (cycling, running, rowing more in the weekday evenings). I can almost feel any hint of what might be called collective seasonal affective disorder burning off everyone in the last few days.

Blogger's own snapshot - City centre park coming into full blossom

The fact it has coincided with very lovely sunny weather might well have accentuated the benefit of the clock shift this year. That it also coincides with my training for a marathon this year might be heightening the feeling for me as it now means that evening runs will often be in daylight (and on routes that have felt unsafe all Winter as they are unlit paths / trials).

Training / fitness

I have been renewing my 'friendship' with the calorie tracking myfitnesspal app (see www.myfitnesspal.com), thanks to having read a post by 'Morning Runner', specifically "WIAW (after a 20 miler)". I was using this app last year (I have the tag on my blog showing my progress still), but had gotten out of the habit. Reading a post by one of the many extremely clued in running bloggers that I have been browsing in spare moments which mentioned the app got me thinking, and moreover remembering how well it worked for me before the Cardiff Half last autumn. So I am back 'on the wagon' so to speak, and hopefully over the next few weeks I'll begin to see real benefits. One benefit, as pointed out in the post I read, is that it helps you keep track of 'refueling' after heavy exercise days, as it is all to easy to wake up the day after a busy day feeling awful just because the exercise left you with net negative calorie count for the previous day.

Motivation right here, I've got to get into green ;-) - an image pulled from my myfitnesspal tools page

Having had a look around my myfitnesspal online pages, with charts of last years effort and so forth, I came across the BMI calculator (result shown above). I was mildly miffed (!) that my BMI came in just over the green / yellow boundary, it would be so fantastic to get myself firmly planted somewhere in the upper quartile of the healthy range... oh, and so much easier to run a marathon if I can shift a few pounds, and not have to haul the extra around 26.2 miles!

Blogging and stuff

While I am wittering on about blogs I've read lately I often have a look at blogger 'Blogs of note' page on the way into or out of my blog. One that has caught my eye and my attention of late is '366 Random Acts Of Kindness', it is thoroughly simply and yet complete genius. A guy has decided to take the leap year and spend a large part of it paying forward kind acts (see his post 'Tomorrow it begins...' for his full motivation). Some of the acts at first look seem so, so simple and then you realise "hey, I could do that" - and there in lies the essence of the genius. I will be checking back regularly to see how he gets on.

PS. I am enjoying the new Blogger user interface it is certainly cleaner and crisper looking than I was used to. It seems that I can navigate my way around it to - which is always a good thing ;-)