@ameel’s recent tweet prompted me to drag up some blog posts I used to read on sleeping. I’m a big fan of this activity, but in my many years of practice, I have yet to master the technique.

The article Ameel pointed me to is about catching up on lost sleep. I used to have a tendency of waking up quite early in the morning, looking at my clock and then worrying about not getting enough sleep for the remaining hours before my alarm went off.

This behaviour cost me considerable hours of this precious resource. I would continually watch the clock and cause myself worry about how little time I had left to sleep.

The solution? I changed my behaviour and stopped looking at my clock. Now, when I wake up in the dark hours, I just turn around and treat myself to more sleep. I no longer worry about the time and how much of it I have left.

By doing this, I have trained my body to fall back asleep quickly. So whether I have 2 hours or 30 minutes left before my alarm goes off, I make the best use of it without worry and with some good quality rest.

If you’re interested in reading more about sleep patterns and the like, then Steve Pavlina has written a number of articles on this. It’s a great log of his personal experiments with getting up early and Polyphasic Sleep. I just wish I had the time to spend playing around with this stuff.

(I stopped reading his blog when he began crapping on too much about “intention manifestation”. Something I have written briefly about before.)

“I have an earache…”

2000 BCE: “Here, eat this root.”
1000 CE: “That root is heathen. Here, say this prayer.”
1850 CE: “Prayer is superstition. Here, drink this potion.”
1940 CE: “That potion is snake oil. Here, swallow this pill.”
1985 CE: “That pill is ineffective. Here, take this antibiotic.”
2002 CE: “That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root.”

- Anonymous

Went for my first run in a few months last night. Didn’t get terribly far (2km) but am glad I did it. Will be going for another tomorrow night and then again on the weekend.

To keep me motivated as summer comes along, I’ve enrolled on another Boot Camp month and also booked my place in the October Melbourne Marathon. I’ll aim to do 10km at the marathon run. Only half the distance of my start of year goal of the half marathon, but it’s still more than I’ve ever run in my life.

Oh well, off to start psyching myself up.

Well it’s my first personal best but that’s gotta count for something. We (being me and E.) ran in the Melbourne Mother’s Day Classic on the weekend. I opted for the 4km run as I’ve had a pretty sore ankle this last week.

The event was pretty fun and we had perfect weather. Soooo many people. I was pretty shocked and didn’t quite expect the mountain of people running down St Kilda Rd and through the gardens. What I found most amazing was the variety of people. You hear people say it all the time, but until you experience it, you really don’t understand how varied the variety really is. There were literally all sorts, including a gorgeous little kid in a Superman outfit, cape and all!

New personal best …
4km run, 27 minutes, 54.26 seconds
E. did really well too: 31 minutes, 10.45 seconds.
The image is of my heart rate during the run. I have one of those fancy Polar watch gadgets which measures your heart rate and all sorts of stuff as you exercise. I’ve finally gotten it working with my Mac so I can produce the cool looking graphs. It tells me that I ran at around 9.8km/hr for my last 2kms. That’s pretty cool for me. On average I ran around 8.5km/hr which is a nice comfortable tempo.

The odd things are the dip around half way through - that was the drink I slowed down for (and walked for 30 secs). The other oddity is that my heart rate high 199bpm at the start of the final kilometre! It must’ve been a glitch cause by all accounts, with that heart rate, I should’ve been a goner.

I can’t wait until my ankle gets better so I can actually get out there and run some more. Sheez, how things change!

As I ventured out on my first morning bike ride, I felt somewhat odd. It wasn’t the strange shoes, nor was it getting used to feeling the wind as I moved down the street.

You see, I opted to just go for a ride. Nowhere in particular, just loiter around the back streets of Mornington for 30 minutes and make sure I get home in one piece. Unlike running, I felt that riding needed a destination.

Run around a block 5 times and get home feeling a great sense of achievement. Ride around a block 5 times and get home feeling stupid. It probably has something to do with the speed I’m traveling. How fast do I need to be moving before I feel like I have to get somewhere.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be riding up to “Morning Star” and back. If you know the area, Morning Star is at the peak of a pretty long hill. If I can make it up there and back home in one piece, I’ll have no problems riding to work next week. That’s my goal for the next week - let’s see if it get me anywhere.

Picked up some new wheels last week and just got home from my first ride on them. It’s a Giant OCR Composite 2 (2007 model) with the clipless pedals and all.
Now, why they call them “clipless” when they clearly have clips on them, I don’t yet know. I do know that you need to remember to unclip your foot when you come to the lights or you might just be getting cosy with the bitumen.

If you’re going to buy a new bike, I would highly recommend the folks a The Freedom Machine in Prahran. They seriously wont let you out of there until they have fitted you properly to the bike, given you a training session and taught you everything you need to know to ride it properly. They were pretty exceptional.

The new wheels have come just in time as my running fling is started to wane somewhat. It’s mainly because of a terribly sore ankle I have developed over the last week. It kind of sucks because I was really starting to enjoy my morning runs. Hopefully the biking will help me keep active until my ankle returns to normal.

My Myers-Briggs type is ENTJ with an out of the ordinary pressure-prompted facet. Aside from being amongst most of the world’s leading CEOs (who are mostly ENTJs), the pressure-prompted facet indicates that I usually only spur into motion at the last available minute. This is why my half-marathon in October goal is too far away to be a real motivator for me.So, I’ve set some interim goals and events to keep me on track:

• 13 May - Mother’s Day Classic (8km run)
• 17 June - Run to the G (10km run)
• 7 October - Melbourne Marathon (½ Marathon 21.1km)

Now, the Mother’s Day Classic run isn’t just for women. I double-checked that! I also need to find some events to keep me going from June to October.

I’m hoping these “external” pressures have the desired effect of keeping me on the right track. Let’s see how they pan out over the next month until May 13.
So, anyone wanna join me? The first two can also be walked so they should be good fun for all.

Have just finished my first week of solo training. No sarge yelling at me to keep going, no fit people running past me giving me encouragement and no punishments for not turning up.

This week really proved to me how hard it actually is to do this stuff alone. Getting up to get out there and train isn’t too much of an issue for me. It’s the pushing through the pain barrier that I struggle with.

On boot camp you you achieve some pretty great things. On your own, a simple 2km jog is so much harder. It says so much about the effect a team can have on your improvement.

I will need to find some ways of motivating myself to keep going whilst in the midst of the actual run/training. Grabbing private citizens on their morning stroll and forcing them to jog with you just isn’t working for me.

Here are a few things from Devine Sports I might try:

• Getting psyched to run solo
• Motivational tips for the long run
• Motivational secrets to get you over the hump

Oh yeah, I’ve changed the theme of the site. I was getting a little sick of the other one, although I don’t think this one really quite suits. Will stick with it for a little while though.

Finally got my training plan for the next month or so. This will get me started (after my recent two months of Boot Camp) on my journey to completing the half marathon in October.

By the end of the month, I’ll be doing:

• Four jogs a week of 5kms each
• Two bike rides of 5kms each
• A series of strength exercises for my legs, back and core muscles

The sarge has got me exercising 5 days a week and I’ll soon be riding and/or running to and from work in Mt Eliza. It’ll definitely be a challenge but I’m committed to doing it. Gotta start on Monday!

The Boot Camp physical
This morning we had our end of month physical. I didn’t go to well with the strength exercises. I beat my previous scores for both the Beep Test and the 2km run.

Now that I got past 7 in my beep test, I’m officially a Boot Camp “Alpha”! This is the group which gets the harder exercises and longer runs. I’m not looking forward to running with Bertha on the next hell week!
Here’s my progress over the last two months:

Beep Test (VO2 Max)

• Started at: 3.8
• After the first month: 5.8
• Today: 7.1

2km run

• Started at: 14m 52s (walked a lot of it!)
• After the first month: 11m 49s (ran all of it!)
• Today: 10m 51s (ran all of it except for a 5 sec breather half way)

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the progress. Let’s see how I rate in September when Boot Camp proper starts up again!

Why ride when you can run?

That was the conclusion I came to with my Boot Camp trainer last week. One of my goals was to ride to work twice a week (5kms each way). Much to my surprise, we had just run 7kms in under an hour that morning at Boot Camp so it seemed like my original goal had already been achieved.

Here’s what we came up with:

• Lose 10k by the end of this year
• Ride to or from work twice a week (5km)
• Run to or from work twice a week (5km)
• Complete the half marathon in October

Aside from getting myself fit, I’d be saving 0.19 tonnes of greenhouse gas each year (according to Greenfleet). That’s not much at all actually. Perhaps I should be working up to running to Carlton three times a week?