Summer round-up

PHEW! what a summer

Well I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted!  So much for lazy afternoons in the sunshine as this just hasn’t happened this year. With a constant trickling of friends and family visits, I’ve had to don my London tourist hat this summer with visits to the Tate Modern and Buckingham Palace to name just a few. And although fun it has been, my diet and exercise regime has taken a slight pounding to say the least. With too much Rose wine and far too much cake consumed I really do need to rein it in. I know I shouldn’t really say this, but I’m actually looking forward to the autumn and some normality again - well before the madness of, dare I say it, CHRISTMAS!

Now jolly visits aside, I haven’t fallen completely off the band wagon and thought I’d do a quick round-up as to what training I’ve been up to since the great British 10K back in July. Even with the crazy summer antics I’ve still managed to squeeze in a training session; half an hour here, a quick yoga session there, followed by a spin class and not forgetting running every so often both road, trail and treadmill (very pleased with a personal best on the treadmill for 5K in 23 minutes 40 seconds). I also continue to attend a running club (Greenwich Runners) on Saturday Morning’s in Greenwich Park. It’s here the coach puts us through our paces and makes us do things in a training session you probably wouldn’t do on your own, like running and up and down a very steep hill, or sprint sessions. I’ve also been following daily exercise challenges created by a personal trainer who used to work at my local gym, Nicola Pybus of FitandFlashy. Nicola has just set up her new fitness challenge site called Fit Squad. Now Nicola has an amazing body. She trains hard and boy does it show, but she is one of the best trainers I know who creates training exercises especially for women of any age and any fitness level. I urge anyone, even those who don’t work out much at the moment to have a look and sign up for a month of challenges and notice the difference in your strength by the end of it. Fit Squad kick starts this September.

And although my eating habits may have slightly gone off-kilter of late I’ve also started some serious research into how you can improve your performance and specifically how to train for endurance as a woman.

I’m currently reading “Roar” by Stacy T Sims PhD and I really wish I had read this last year when I was training for my half marathons. The mantra of this book is that Women are not small men. So many times I’ve tried to follow a training plan devised by a young male trainer and only to fail miserably. It may seem blatantly obvious but we are different to men. In general we are smaller, have different fat deposits and have way more hormones!

So many things are starting to make sense since reading this book and I’m seeing improvements already and I haven’t even finished the book yet. What I was pleased to discover is that women are built to be naturally good at endurance which is perfect for marathon running and probably why I do enjoy a nice long run. 

In the book it explains how to eat without counting calories; the best way to eat depending on your body shape - are you a Ectomorph, Endomorphy or Mesomorph -  and at what stage you’re at in your life cycle and how to train - young, pregnant or menopause - myself now being a 40 something woman would not eat or train the same as someone in their 20’s. It’s basically being honest with yourself and then you can up your training accordingly. The one big thing that has come out of this is that I need to up my strength training and really focus on my glute muscles if I’m ever going to run this marathon comfortably - well as comfortable as one can when they are pounding the streets for 26.2 miles!  So that’s my plan. More strength training with weights and heavy weights at that. As women age we lose muscle mass and the only way to create and maintain your muscles is lots and lots of strength training.

So in the the words of the late great MJ [Michael Jackson], THIS IS IT. No more messing around, the serious training is about to begin. With Autumn just round the corner, I’ll be starting a new pilates course in September to further improve my posture [the book on the head doesn’t work by the way (see earlier blog)]  and strength train, strength train, strength train. And then a bit more strength training just for fun followed by a large G&T!

  

Trying my Tommy's running vest

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