(For those of you who recognize this post, know that it posted itself  TWICE before it was finished last week.  Silly post.  It’s now under control and properly finished.  Take another read if you think  you’ve already seen it!)

So, I’ve been AWOL from my walking since last week. I have lots of excuses, but I’m thinking mostly it’s a motivational problem. I hate the cold. Probably not so legitimate. I’ve also got hit “quick and heavy” with the flu, and found that while the most uncomfortable symptoms passed within 36 hours, I was tired, foggy-headed, and just dragging myself around for a good week afterwards. I decided to take the week off and just go slow.

So what do you think? Was that right? Was that wrong? Was I just lazy? I find I’m a genius at rationalizing my behaviour. Years of practice have made me an expert. It’s hard to be objective.

The good news was that I was out and walking this morning. Last week when I was unmotivated I did put together some great playlists (working through the Bible and a bunch of podcasts I want to catch up with) and they’re all in sequential order, so if I miss a day, I mess up the whole system.  Good way to stay on track!

And I’m back walking my longer distances this morning.  I’ve gotten myself better organized so I can manage longer walks.  Monday and Tuesday is 1.5 hours, Wednesday is off, Thursday and Friday is 2 hours, Saturday is 1 hour and Sunday is 3 hours. It feels great to be back in the game!  Woohoo!

If you’ve been slacking, I hope my new found motivation gets you going as well!

Happy walking!

Darlene

Oh, it’s been AGES since I posted – or even walked!  Yikes!

A combination of weather (sudden dump of snow), lack of shoes to walk in said snow (Vibram is all out of the winter version of funky feet), and an extreme bout of the flu from which I’m just now slowly recovering, has put me totally out to pasture for the past two weeks.

However, I’ve tried not to be too idle.  I’ve had lots of time to experiment with my iPod Touch (gotta love that thing – when it works…) and I’ve discovered the coolest thing!  Not only is the content amazing, but the delivery is stunning.  You’ve gotta check this out!

And no, you don’t NEEEEED an iPod to use it, but it’s a really fun way to take in the technology.

Oh, and the 90 second fitness program? Well, anyone can do it (though it’s a challenge) and whew, do you feel it when it’s done!

Darlene

I completed level 2 in my training on Saturday by participating in a 10k race for a local church here. Even without the 1˚C (33.8˚F) temperature and brisk winter wind, it was an interesting experience.

I warmed up well, started out by climbing up a reasonably steep but short hill, and proceeded through what was a beautiful, not-terribly-strenuous walk to complete the first 5k loop. I found that although I wasn’t breathing hard or feeling like I was exerting myself beyond my comfort zone (keeping up with about a 7 on the RPE in my estimation), I was pushing myself beyond my ideal heart rate, and my muscles got very tired, very quickly – which is unusual, as I walk a 10k or more almost every week with no issues whatsoever.

I have been training using the Maffetone method which I love, but I’ve not been using it long enough to get a good speed result from a 10k race, so I decided to ignore all his good advice about keeping within your (much lower than conventional) ideal training heart rate level, and just walk as quickly as I could without getting winded. By the end of the first 5k my feet were numb from the cold and felt like bricks, I was demotivated, tired, frustrated, and feeling generally like quitting. I couldn’t believe it. I warm up with a 5k. This was ridiculous.

The second half was better because I hooked up with the woman who owns Distinctive Catering and we got into a great discussion about my funky shoes (they were quite the hit at this walk) and walking in general and I slowed my pace a little to keep together with her and engage in conversation. This moved me back into a better pace within my ideal heart rate. My pace had moved to about a 5.5-6 on the RPE, and with my feet now having some warm blood circulating through them, engaging myself in interesting conversation, and staying within my hear rate, I felt much better on the second lap – but was still feeling quite tired. Much more tired than my long walks (i.e. 21k) feel. This was odd.

The race ended in the middle of a pretty good downfall of snow, so I didn’t want to hang around much outside when it was over (though I did snag a bagel and had a brief chat with some walkers around the coffee urn…) Because of this I didn’t really stretch properly (what is WRONG with me?) and so for the rest of the day I was tired, achy, and quite uncomfortable.

So, lesson learned. I will take longer to prepare for my 21k so that my aerobic level is at place where I can complete it within my proper heart rate level at an 8 minute/kilometer speed (2.8hr finish time – I’m not too far off). And I will take the time to stretch properly when I’m done.

Live and learn….

Happy walking!

Darlene

(PS – sorry I don’t have any pics. My hubby had a meeting on in the morning and couldn’t be there to take pictures of my crossing the finish line in the snow… Too bad)

I’ve spent months researching training programs for walking.

I’ve spent weeks setting one up and working it into my schedule.

I’ve spent about a month trying it out.

It won’t work.

Currently I’m spending a large chunk of my morning in devotional time – prayer, worship, bible study, etc. Following that, I usually go for my walk. The walking schedule looks like this: Monday-Tuesday: 1.5 hour walk; Wednesday: Off; Thursday-Friday: 2 hour walk; Saturday: 3 hour walk; Sunday: 1 hour walk.

I then come home, post my walk, and my morning is over. The kids (who, bless them, have spent my walking time doing housework and chores) now want to spend time with their mother, so we tend to watch a movie over lunch. Another 2.5 hours gone, minimum, depending on how long the movie is and how long it takes us to get organized with lunch.

After lunch is school, which takes a couple of hours, then it’s already time to get dinner ready, tidy up from the day, and welcome Tom home, which means I get pretty much NOTHING done on my list of things to do (see that list in this blog post). The evenings are either booked, or I spend them with my family, so that’s out, too.

So this morning, drastic cuts were made. Walking is now only one hour during the week. I’ll extend the Saturday one to two hours to make up some of the time. Lunch time movies are now reduced to one episode of a TV show borrowed from the library as opposed to a movie (currently we’re watching “Lost”), and I’ve postponed half of the courses I’m taking in order to have the time I need to get SOMETHING done.

The good news is that I am now much more focused when I am working, so that I can get the maximum amount done.

I just so wish I didn’t have to sleep…

Darlene

On Friday I came across this excellent article that talks about the importance of balance: “Overtraining: A Good Thing Gone Bad”

When I was in training for my marathon last October I learned first hand about the joys of overtraining, and it was during that time that I learned about the “Maffetone Method”. This method of training pretty much guarantees you’re not going to over do things, and it’s the system I’m using this time around. What I like about it is that Dr. Maffetone (a world recognized endurance trainer) says it’s important to listen to your body, and if you’re not up to par, stay home.

This past week I felt stressed, tired and frustrated for no real reason – perhaps the cloudy days, I don’t do well under overcast skies – and so I took a couple of days off of training (I even took the week off of posting my blog). I got back on the road on Friday, but the results shown to me on my heart rate monitor proved that I was still not in a great place for training. After a week of struggling to get my heart rate high enough last week due to very quick improvement, I found myself on Friday barely able to get it below my maximum. Every hill pushed my heart beyond my ideal training point.

Most training programs encourage you to push through those kinds of days, but I know that I have been pushing pretty hard in other areas of my life these past couple of weeks, and so my heart already gets a workout just dealing with that. It’s important to give the body what it needs to be fit AND healthy!

You don’t want to abuse this system with laziness and lack of motivation, but you do have to know your body well enough to know when to say stop.

I did manage a slow 3 hr walk on Saturday with minimal stress, and I also did a one-hour on Sunday and a 1.5 hour walk today.

Darlene

I wasn’t always a big fan of technology.  Mostly it overwhelmed me, and I seemed to be doing fine without it.  Then I married a techie.  For our first Christmas I got a beautiful Canon SLR camera.  Pocket Instamatics overwhelmed me, so this was a pretty big jump.

_	One day Tom came home with an early model of an MP3 Player. It was the size of a standard portable CD player, with about 1 gig of memory. I had no idea what to do with it. Over time I learned to use it, and it became a best friend. Then it broke. So Tom bought me a new iPod nano – the skinny one, with 2 gigs of memory. I was in love. Shortly after I got this little nano I began walking regularly. I learned to create playlists, and started to really enjoy this form of exercise. I thought it would be fun to get a pedometer and see how many steps I took a day.
I saw that Nike had this little sports tracker thing called a Nike+ iPod , and asked if it would work as a pedometer. I was told it would, so I bought it. It doesn’t. It did a great job of tracking my walks and telling me how far I’d gone and how fast I went. It also had nice people like Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong and Jenny Hadfield telling me I did a great job, exceeding my last personal best at something. Kinda cool. I was hooked.
	But it wasn’t a pedometer, so I also got a pedometer: The Omron HJ-720ITC Pocket Pedometer with Advanced Omron Health Management Software, which I adore, because it uploads everything onto my computer and keeps track of my steps, if I remember to put it on! I have, unfortunately, lost the program CD for it, so I can’t upload the info onto my new laptop, I have to keep turning on my old computer and uploading the info there. If I don’t do it regularly, the pedometer stops working.
Then I got out of the car one day after a workout at the gym and my iPod fell out of the car onto the driveway, and I stepped on it, breaking the screen. My best beloved husband then bought me a new square pink nano for Valentine’s day. I realized that I could also put my calendar, contacts, notes, and training schedule on this new iPod. I was in heaven! However, the written stuff didn’t always work. Sometimes I’d get up in the morning ready to head out, check my iPod for the day’s workout, and found I couldn’t access it. Sometimes it took as much as 4 hours of fiddling to get the text stuff to work, only to find that the next time I wanted it, it had disappeared again. The Nike stuff was still perfect, though, so I put up with the frustration of the text stuff and found ways to work around it.
	Shortly after this I got a Sports Instruments PRO 9 Heart Rate Monitor as I’d been reading in Phil Maffetone’s books about training with one for the fastest improvement and the greatest endurance for long races. I thought this would be a good thing, as I was planning on walking a marathon. I found it incredibly complicated to understand how to use the thing, so it sat on a shelf for a long time, and I walked the marathon without it.
My best beloved got frustrated with my frustration and got me an iPod touch as it had all the functionality I wanted, and the Nike tool was built in. For about 2 months I was in heaven. I hadn’t figured out the HR monitor yet, but the Nike+iPod was working like a dream. Very fun. All my training was at my fingertips, and I was a happy camper.

Then one day I lost my Nike sensor. I bought a new one that I couldn’t get to work. I replaced it with a second one, and then a third. Finally it was working.

I also got the HR monitor working, but the first day I used it “officially” I couldn’t get it to read my heart rate – making it somewhat less than useful.

Then I got the HR monitor working only to have the iPod stop speaking to me with it’s wonderfully encouraging voice feedback.

I got the voice feedback working, and now it won’t recognize my sensor.

The HR monitor is working like a charm.

I wonder if it’s worth it?

Maybe I should just go for a walk…

Darlene

Well, I had a good week off to rest from the race and plan my next move. First of all, let me update you on my weightloss results from “The Lord’s Table”

It has been a challenging course, but it’s working out many of the core issues for why I can’t seem to get rid of these last 30 pounds or so. My mentor is just about the most encouraging person on the planet, so it’s a joy to work through this with her. And it’s free. If you’re looking to lose weight, start here!

I also spent the weekend getting my training all set up for the next leg of my walking journey – a 10 k in October. I’m using a heart rate monitor for this set of training to make sure I stay in the place of fastest possible advancement. I’m using Dr. Phil Maffetone’s training techniques based on his 180-age formula instead of the standard 220-age, which feels way too slow to just about anyone who want’s to get fit fast. However, he specializes in Endurance Training, and has trained people to break records on 1,000 mile races (completed in about 16 days!) and he’s also trained world champion Triathletes, usually without injury. He teaches you to teach your body to fuel itself using fat instead of sugar, and so your body can go much farther much faster with much less stress and also lowers the level of production of free radicals. His training lowers the stress on your body while improving your results much more quickly. You just have to have the necessary patience to get through the slow times!

I plotted out my complete training schedule between now and the Marathon in October 2010 in a general fashion, and am working on plotting the details one month in advance. It’s rather complicated to work everything in properly and to set up my iPod music to guide me through while keeping a close eye on my heart rate monitor. Ach, it will keep me out of trouble! LOL!

Anyway, if you want to join me, let me know, and I’ll send my training schedule to you as it gets done. If you have an iPod, I’ll also send you my playlists.

Happy walking!

Darlene

Yesterday I did a 5k walking race for “Pace Kids” at South Glenmore Park in Calgary. The day was perfect – we’d had a couple of good storms the day before, and so it was cool, fresh, and a little damp, but sunny. The course itself was through the woods so it was absolutely lovely.

Now I can do a 5k without breaking a sweat, any time of the week. However, I took this race quite seriously and worked to set a personal best goal for speed. I’ve been working hard on my form and wanted to see if it paid off.

The first thing that happened is that my iPod fritzed and so it took almost a kilometer for it to start working properly (I ended up laying hands on it and telling it to work in Jesus’ name, and it hopped right to it! LOL! Gotta love the power of God in desperate situations!) I had set up a trio of tracks at different speeds – 167 beats per minute, 171 bpm, and 173 bpm (the actual track starts about 3 min. into that recording, if you want to see how fast I walk). I’ve NEVER consistently walked that fast before. I managed to complete most of the race at the 173 level. Pretty proud of myself.

I also very quickly passed all the walkers and a large part of the joggers. That was pretty encouraging!

Tom and Tina, who were faithfully waiting for me at the finish line, said I was the first walker through, which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, this particular race doesn’t track walkers and runner separately, so that wasn’t noted anywhere. I had fun though, and felt great that I could keep up that pace for almost 45 minutes.

My goal was to beat my personal best, which, according to my Nike+ iPod system is 35′11″, but I quickly found out that my iPod is almost 20% inaccurate when it comes to logging my pace. Sigh. What my iPod tracked as a 7′03″ minute kilometer, the race tracked as more like 8′30″ or something (still waiting to get the final results). That was disheartening, as I know I walked this 5k faster than I’ve ever walked one before. The 35′11″ pace obviously isn’t even close to being accurate. However, I am pleased with my efforts and now have a clearer idea of where to head in my future training (10Km training starts tomorrow for a race in October). And at the end Lance Armstrong announced (though the Nike program on my iPod) that I’d set a new personal best for the mile. That was encouraging.

The most amazing event was the family 1km which I walked with Tina afterward. We were in a crowd of kids that were pretty challenged as far as being able to do something as “simple” as walking. They were amazing. Sporting prostheses, braces, using walkers, crutches, and some just limping along, we all crossed the finish line together, and I was moved to thank God that not only did I have two strong, undamaged legs, but so did my kids and my husband. The kids and their parents in that race all deserved a medal, that’s for sure! Very impressive!

There’s still time to send in a donation if you like. These are worthy kids, struggling pretty hard to do stuff that we take for granted each and every day. Pretty cool watching them tackle that race with all the focus and energy it took me to walk the 5k. Click the button below to send a donation:

So, onward and upward, taking my iPod results with a HUGE grain of salt! LOL!

Darlene