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50th Parkrun & Sub 25 minutes

Parkrun 50

Yesterday was a big morning for me at Parkrun.

It was my 50th Parkrun (earning me the shirt to the right), and at the same time I’d set myself a goal of running the 5km in less than 25 minutes, despite the fact that my PB of 25:22 had stood for over 12 months. In fact that 12 months was beginning to feel like a lifetime ago, before my failed snorkeling experience off Mystery Island in July 2016 and before tearing my knee in December and having surgery on it in February. That said, I knew I’d done a lot of work, and as recently as last week, surprised myself by getting to within 7 seconds of that PB. The thing is, I’d set a goal to break 25 minutes a number of times, and never made it.

I was buoyed by the offer from Tony to pace me through the distance, a ready eye on his watch the whole time. I was not helped at all by the fact the I had a shoelace come undone about 200m in and the other at about the 1.5km mark. I deliberately decided not fix the second shoelace at the first stop, as it would mean I would end up further back in the pack, there was a chance the lace might last, and my fingers were too cold and numb to tie properly. 😃

In the end all was well, though in giving my all to get across the finish, I didn’t manage to grab my finish token and had to go back for it a minute or two later once I’d caught my breath. Position #41, definitely my best position number, but I had to wait a couple of hours to get the official time:

Lillydale Lake parkrun results for event #168. Your time was 00:24:40.

24:40! I’d sliced a whopping 42 seconds off my PB, made it under 25 minutes and survived!

Thanks Tony, and all the people who cheered me on on the day.

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Parkrun goals.

Parkrun

I shared in the Five months post surgery knee update that I’ve been whittling my parkrun times down over the last month, (though not nearly in the same way as my nephew who has recorded 13 PBs in a row, go Zach!). Tomorrow will mark my 50th Parkrun, which is an exciting milestone, 2 years and 4 months after my first run on 21/3/2015. That first run was 36:47, and I’m hoping to celebrate my 50th with a new PB under 25 minutes. My current PB is 25:22 and best for the year is 25:29 so I think I can do it. Tony, a running coach and fellow member of Up ‘n Active Lilydale Lake Running Group has offered to pace me at 25 minutes, so we are going to give it a red hot go.

Wish me luck.

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Knee – Five months post

Parkrun June 24

The knee is now basically as good as it’s going to get, which is pretty good but still a little painful when I run. It’s amazing how much difference there is between running on concrete, running on asphalt and running on gravel. There is noticeably less impact on the gravel especially. My time has been taken up by other priorities on and off over the last couple of months but I’m trying to get two to three runs in every week. I did my first Parkrun for the year in late April with a time of 35 minutes and and have progressed through 32, 28, 28, 26 and last week finished in 25:29, just 7 seconds outside my PB!

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A tiny step makes a huge difference

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Drowning

A couple of weeks ago with a really badly blocked nose, I tried something both my father and one of my best friends do/have done, which is to snort a handful of water up your nose (usually in the shower) so you can spit it out to clear some of the junk out. The sensation of water in my nasal passages immediate brought back a sense of drowning, and my body went into fight of flight mode, flooding me with adrenalin. It\’s a heck of a way to wake up in the morning, but not something I think I\’ll go for every day.

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Fitness and injury

Things have slowed down rather a bit already. I pulled a hamstring (again) playing tennis on Tuesday night. I really need to find some way to warm my hamstrings up better before and during the sets, or possibly just go for the deep heat.

I will do my best to go for a quiet walk on the treadmill later this morning, just to stretch it out a bit.

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Day 1: about 16 minutes of cardio work.

13 minutes on the treadmill mainly at 7Km/hr with 2 x 1-1.5 minute bursts at 9Ks (1.5km total)
2 minutes doing ab and shoulder excercises
3 minutes in the excercise bike

I managed to do all of that with Bec milling around and wanting to use all the equipment and chatting the whole time.

I\’m still too short of bandwidth for the month, so I can\’t watch any of the video podcasts.

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New Beginings

The time has come to start looking at how I live some parts of my life and to make some healthy decisions while I\’m younger and it is a bit easier.

Over the last 2 years or so, I\’ve really let my fitness slide. Doing Tae Kwon Do in my teens, through playing Indoor Cricket, Basketball, Netball, Soccer, Tennis and Volleyball in my twenties, I was pretty fit and rather healthy. I never ate really well, with a fair bit of junk food, but you can\’t have everything.

Since hitting thirty, I seem to have let the busyness of life get in the way of playing sport and staying fit, though I\’ve recently started playing tennis again to kick the process off. To really kick things into higher gear though, we\’ve set up a gym at home in the guest room (never fear, there is still room for guests).

We have a new treadmill we bought off ebay, a Totalgym 1000 that I bought out of the Trading Post 4 years ago (and have hardly used) and an old Exercise bike given to us by Bernie\’s brother Paul. The other thing in the room is an old PC to watch and listen to stuff on while we excercise. One of the reasons I\’ve never been interested in things like the excercise bike or a treadmill is the complete waste of brain power while the body is working.

I\’ve solved that problem in the car by burning CDs of podcasts and getting a fill of tech news as I drive, so I figured I\’d do the same with excercise, but instead use all those video podcasts I never get time to sit and watch. At this point I should say a special thanks to Wil Harris for this week choosing to launch Channel Flip, a series of 5 minute daily video casts aimed at males 18-30 something.

The new plan is:
Drink 1 litre of water every day before I drink any alcohol.
Excercise 4 times a week:
3 x 20 minute session (works out to 2 episodes each of Play:Digital and Unwired)
1 x 60 minute session (The average length of an episode of diggnation)