Garmin Scales

Grumpy_chap

Another month and running is definitely plateauing which makes it hard to keep motivated, but I have noticed that my "casual" running is definitely faster.

I have had more success on PT and feel in only another 10 years or so I could actually reach "beach body ready".  Took out another offer on a pack as the gym was more keen to get PT sessions sold than I was to pay the absurd price increase.

Still thinking on the massage gun.

Grumpy_chap

Thinking of a new strategy for running. 
I was applying progressive overload technique, doing each run faster than the run before.  That is now much of a plateau.
I wonder whether I should run at target pace, but less distance and then apply progressive overload by increasing the distance with successive runs?

Grumpy_chap

WoooHoo - Garmin app gave me a notification this morning that I have achieved the steps goal 368 days in a row - that's just over a year!!!!  

alidai

Just a comment on your running, progressive overload as you’ve seen will work for a while but isn’t sustainable.  If you want to get quicker, which it seems you do, then you need to vary what you’re doing.

This means, running most of your runs easier than you are, I.e. slow.
Mixing in some speed work, sprints for short distances, repeat 4 or 6 times, and try them up a hill also.
Long runs - slow down your pace completely by a minute or two per km and run for 10km or longer

Grumpy_chap

I saw a Physio on Tuesday this week and she firstly confirmed there is nothing actually "wrong" with my knee causing the pain and gave me some isolation exercises to improve the strength specifically in the areas where I've experienced the pain, so that is good news.

Secondly, she said I should not do runs just at constant speed and ever more progressive overload as I have been doing, but suggested a trio of runs for each week:

• Longer run at slower pace
• Shorter run at faster pace
• Target 5k run at varying pace, 800m fast followed by 200 m set back

It's almost as though my Physio read the post from @alidai

Sadly, I've now got COVID so resting more than I'd like but, fortunately, the symptoms don't seem too bad so I wlll hopefully be back very soon.

Grumpy_chap

Another month turns around.

Saw the physio but then failed to get any exercise in as COVID forced a rest and, somehow, I managed to twist my ankle while self-isolating.

Coming up is a holiday to the beach, so that won't be conducive to a fitness regime.

Looks like I'll be taking the best part of a month of quality rest and relaxation to come back with full vigour for May.

Grumpy_chap

Well, April ended up as pretty much a whole month off excercise.

I had COVID so self-isolated for the first half of the month, right up until I got two clear LFT test in consecutive days.
Then I had the pleasure of two weeks holiday in Spain, which was really enjoyable but beach sun-loungers are not the best place to get "beach body ready".

I plan to be back to the gym this week, so will start to ramp up my exercise levels.  There is also a "May Step Challenge" at work, so I am doing that.  The Challenge has been set to do 1.8 million steps, but I think that is just a mistake - according to my tracker I only did 5 million steps in the whole past year.  I plan to win.  I am starting out with a target of 20k steps per day.  I reckon that will at least put me in a good place going into week two and I will have the bench-mark of others then also.

Grumpy_chap

Did my first 5k for a long time today, 22 mins 14 sec, which is respectable enough and only a minute behind my PB so I can aim to get back to that this month and then work towards the 20 minute goal.

Grumpy_chap

May turned out to be a good month overall - I managed to get myself back into more regular training.  I joined in the step challenge at work, so total steps for the month 720k.  On top of that I managed to match and then beat my PB for 5k, which was nice to achieve.  I've been a bit slow and patchy to restart resistance training though, so beach-body ready is not improving.  Annoyingly, during the month, an IT glitch meant a few steps were lost and my 436 days of continuously meeting steps goal was broken.  I hope that Garmin will be able to fix that.

Grumpy_chap

Glad to report that Garmin recovered the lost data from the IT glitch and my consecutive total for achieving the daily step count has now reached 479 and counting...

Got another 30 seconds off my 5k PB so really pleased with the past month in that context but not achieving as much in the "beach body ready" objective - I am now doing more regular resistance sessions so maybe that will show some results soon.