Sunday, September 28, 2008

Exercise revisited

How many of you are Healthy Food Guide readers? I've loved this magazine from when it first hit our shelves, and have had a subscription for ages.

The October issue has some great stuff that sits well with how I'm feeling about food right now - making positive changes to build a healthy life. If you get a chance, I really think it's worth a read.

I've made a big change to exercise this week - for the first time I have a personal trainer. I really needed to work out why I wasn't making any progress with my running. This running thing is weird: I have no ambition to be 'a runner', but I really want to be able to run if I want to. And I want to be able to run this duathlon in November, not walk.

My first session with Karl (seems like a typical PT name to me!) was to assess my fitness - mostly he wanted to see how I run so we could work out what my problem is. He quickly decided it was what I suspected - my shallow breathing. My technique is okay and my fitness is good, I just run out of puff.

So he's going to concentrate on pushing the top end of my fitness. At the moment this centres around the bike: I start on Level 9 with rpm around 95. Each minute for five minutes I increase the level by 1 till I reach 13, then drop straight back down to 9. This is repeated 4 times. So my heartrate steadily climbs and then drops down for a recovery before climbing again. Have to admit there was a fair bit of sweat involved!

I'm going to see Karl twice a week for the next four weeks - hopefully it will make a big difference to my fitness. It will also cost me a chunk of money, but I reckon that will help motivate me; why waste the money by not pushing myself to get as much benefit from this as possible? After that I think I'll just see him every couple of weeks for a while.

I'm getting my full progamme from him on Tuesday - really looking forward to that!

This week I have been toying whether or not I want to keep blogging. But I think it will help me with this exercise focus, so I'll stick with it for now.

6 comments:

Apple2Hourglass said...

Karl sounds like he'll be able to help you alot. I forget to blog most times, must mean I have lots in my life keeping me busy. I'm trying to keep up with it though, cos it's really helping me right now, I think we'll all give it up eventually though.

Lainey said...

Karl sounds just the ticket. I like the bike programme- makes it so much more interesting that just peddaling away for 20 mins or however long.

Please don't give up blogging. I really love reading it. Even if it's just now and then I love hearing your chat.

superstar said...

I love HFG, it is such a good mag and has heaps of good information in it!

Anne said...

I buy the HFG monthly, love it! Value for money:-)

Hope you don't give up blogging, some blogs inspire me and yours is one of them:-)

Anonymous said...

Please keep blogging Sue, I really enjoy reading your posts.

I'm a Delicious magazine subscriber, but I've found that I now have more magazines than I know what to do with so may cancel the subscription when it comes up for renewal.

I'd love to pay for a personal trainer but as I already have a gym membership I just can't justify the expense. Hope it works for you and your running.

Julie's Journey said...

Hardly being the person to speak because I am being slack but please dont leave again. You are inspiring how you go about things and I love reading about it.