3 miles last night and feeling good!


I've always heard the general rule was if you run over 90 minutes you can start thinking about 'fuel'.

I trained with GU/Hammer Gel for my marathon. I started to take gels when I reached the 9/10 mile long runs. I did use it for two half marathons. I took one around the 8 mile mark and it worked fine for me. I have also done a half without any gels.

If you want to try them, I would wait until you reach long runs of about 8 miles. Then just try them out and see how your body likes them.
There are so many flavors out there to try. Some have caffeine, some don't. I tried the blocs once and they were a nice change from the gels. Like fruit snacks--tastier then the gels in my opinion.

I don't think the gels are really necessary for a half, but if you train with them and like them--then it works. But I also eat before running. I usually have oatmeal or a banana or something. I don't like running on an empty stomach.

Another thing to think about is mixing water with sport drinks for long miles, that way you can replenish your electrolytes.

Ncuneo - thanks for the input. The furthest I've run is five miles so I have no experience with longer distances. I figure if I do need anything, it will be something small as I'm so used to running (literally) on empty. I'm going to hit the gun store this weekend and get advice about a pepper spray - although it's mostly for mental security, I've seen loose dogs around our neighborhood a few times and I want to see what the gun guys think about having pepper spray for that purpose as well as a human deterrent.

Cheshirecat - it sounds like experimenting is the way to go. It'll be a few months before I'm up to the longer runs, but then it'll be hotter than **** here and running at 5am means no food sounds good. I'll check out the shot blocs and Gu, though something that tastes like a fruit chew sounds much better than Gu... :) I don't like Gatorade at all, but I know there are other sports drinks out there - again, I'll just have to experiment and see what tastes bearable!

As for me - I did 40 minutes on the treadmill this morning, 30 of which were 1/1 intervals. I'm running a super speedy 5mph, but just the joy of actually making a running motion is enough to make me happy! I have a tentative 5k on Feb. 19th and if I'm not ready by then, another one on March 19th. I think I may do the February one even if i have to walk two of the three miles - it's all about getting back on track.

Epic run tonight, was out for an hour and eight minutes. Maybe 4-5 of those minutes were walking but I mostly just ran and ran and ran. It felt so good, especially since this week has been such carb-hoovering ****. I spent my entire day at work loading up on Vietnamese coffee (somewhere between regular and espresso in strength), maybe that's where all my energy came from!

Still no means of measuring distance but I'd guess I went about 5-5.5 miles.

Good trudge round for 90 min along the trails for me this morning.

Good fun, and good to be back into it again after a couple of lazy months.

Three lots of kangaroos along the way. Cute.

And no gels etc required - especially after the pizza i ate last night.!!! I do normally use them for runs over 2hr though (approx one every half hour starting after about 100mins works for me. Can't do more than 2 though, or 3 at a push, otherwise i feel spewy - have to start lugging around bananas and stuff instead if it's such a long effort).

krampus you can download google earth for free and measure distance using the path tool.

I did 3, 4, 5 this week and am aiming for 8-10 tomorrow morning. Not much going on with me right now...feeling a little bleh...tired mostly. I think I'm bored...life's been eventful lately but quite this week - I miss the drama :) Anyway, have a great weekend everyone!

How far outside of Sydney were you? I never saw kangaroos in metro-Brisbane. I think we had enough turkeys to cure world hunger though!

I had a good run yesterday. On the dreadmill, sadly, but nevertheless good. I did 2.5 miles, two of which were 1/1 intervals at 5.3mph (yay, I'm getting faster) with the last two intervals at 6mph, which I'm really NOT qualified to run just yet - that left me breathing a lot heavier than I like! But my knee felt great, no swelling this time, I stretched a ton after I ran and I think that was a big help. Tomorrow I'm hoping to get outside and do three miles, with a mile of walking (warm up, cool down) and two miles of intervals. I just need to be outside as I spend all day indoors and these days are long...

I put together a race calendar for the year, with 5k, 10k and half marathon dates - I get a break from June through September (no races scheduled locally due to the heat) but I may try to find a race in So Cal or somewhere. I'd love to run a race per month, but that may be overly ambitious! I'll do a 5k in February and March and see how things go.

I finished W6D3 today (25min jog). I had been dreading it all week. I was so sore last weekend from the 20 min run. Plus I've been kind of sluggish all week. I dropped my WW points a good bit this week because I'm getting to the end of a 3 month wellness competition with a trip for the top 3 prizes. (I had two goals: run a mile and lose 15 lbs) Next Friday is the deadline and I still have a few more pounds to lose. So I've been feeling that calorie/carb reduction in my workouts all week. Just repeating last Friday's 20 min run sounded like ****; I wasn't sure I could tack on another 5 min. But I ate closer to my normal points today. I don't think I would have finished the run if I'd eaten less.

ETA- oh and tomorrow is the Nashville Zoo 5K. I'm planning to walk the first 2 miles with my co-workers and then run the last 1.1

Hi Ashley - i'm about 15km from city centre - so the 'burbs'. But there's plenty of pockets of national park round here and plenty of roos along the trails early in a morning. You're right though, you don't see them much in residential areas.

I thought I'd up my run a bit today and did 7.2km instead of my usual 4.2km. I felt fine but one of my dogs didn't like the last km........lol

It was a beautiful, warmish morning, lovely running day. I did have to jump over a few puddles when I went through a field.

I hope everyone is enjoying their running :D

Hard work dragging a reluctant dog around. Tried that!!!

Not a great week for me. I was extremely busy with work and came down with an awful cold/mild flu. I barely had the energy to go to work yet alone exercise. Yesterday I went to the gym and did 4 miles. The first .75 went great and I was excited but I hit a wall at .75 so I started to walk and run every 2.5 minutes. I got up to 2.5 miles and ran for a mile and half no problem. It was weird that I hit that wall. Glad I was able to run it out at the end. I am planning to get over to the gym today and get a run in too between 4 and 5 miles.

Just a quick update I made it all 5 miles running at 5.5 on the treadmill. I am so happy that I was able to do it.

Since I'm now "officially" a runner (just finished W1D1 of C25K), I thought I'd pop in & introduce myself... I'm a 61 year old gal who spent too many years not listening to my body & paid the price by getting too big & out of shape... I've been working on that for the past year or so with diet, kettlebell workouts, & my trusty old NordicTrack ski machine... that routine served me well, I've gone from a size 16W to a size 10 & am pretty satisfied with most of my progress... still need to get rid of my jelly belly, though, so I decided a few days ago I needed something to get me out of a rut & looked into running... WOW, am I glad I did & I'm glad I checked out the Exercise! forum on 3FC... hoping to get to know all of you better...

hugs :hug:

Another dreadmill run/walk. I mean, as much as I detest gym cardio machines, actually running on it instead of just walking does seem to make the time pass faster. I was contemplating increasing my speed this week but instead I increased my running intervals - after all, no point being speedy in a 5k if I can't actually FINISH said 5k. I did 90/60 second intervals at 5.0/3.0mph. The knee held up until the last interval, which I did at 6mph, when I got a very slight twinge and realized that was enough for today. Then I did 10 minutes on the rower, which I'm growing to like...

I am set for a 5k on February 19 - the goal is to stick to intervals for the entire race, and I'll figure out the length of those intervals the week before the race - all depends on how things are going! I would love to say I'll run the whole thing but that's not realistic considering I haven't run a 5k in seven months and I still have a knee that's being rehabbed and is definitely weaker and not 100% yet. But I want my first race shirt of the year so I'm doing it! :)

Great weekend. I ran 4 miles on the treadmill at 5.0 then bumped to 5.5 at the end. Then yesterday, I got inspired to run outside even though it was 24 degrees outside and it was awesome! Something just really kicked in with my fitness lately and I feel like I can go and go.

S**t run today. I'm really struggling mentally with the longer runs. I'm on week 7 of C25K now (25 min runs). I know I can do it because I ran 25 min last Friday. But I still have this attitude that it's too much. I really wanted to skip the gym tonight. I pretty much had my mind made up to fail before I even got in there. So, sure enough, 5 min into my run I gave up. Put in some time on the elliptical just to have done something.

Anyone else really struggle with getting their head into the longer runs on C25K? Tips?

Completely missed my run today due to my 2 yr olds rough night. I decided with the lack of sleep it would be best to take a day off. I can't remember the last time I didn't do any activity! It was nice. I don't plan on skipping completely though, I'll make up tomorrow in the am and the hit the gym in the pm and finish the week off per usual. I'm going to push for 25 miles this week, I've been coming in around 20-22 lately and I would like to push myself a little bit...and I secretly want to get my maintenace range down to 130-135, but I haven't really commited:)

Have a great week everyone!

Haven't run since Thursday, so I'm heading out tonight. I wanted to go last night but it was snowing. Hopefully I'll be able to go a fair distance; I'm really nervous considering I smoked half a pack of cigarettes on Saturday night. Not my greatest moment.

Update: Ran about 5 miles/8 km almost effortlessly! No walking breaks. I just listened to a favorite album on my iPod and off I went. Feeling great and not sure if I should sign up for the 5k or 10k category in an April road race/fun run. I can't run a 10k but a 5k wouldn't be much of a challenge. This is Japan so there probably won't be many slow runners/walkers.

Last week I had a good running week. 28 miles total. I’m hoping to run 25-30 miles this week. I ran 5 miles yesterday and 3 today. Planning on doing 4 Wednesday, 6 Friday and 11 Sunday.

Ashley - I've seen others mention this "fear" of the longer runs, and many times it seems doing one of the prior weeks a second - or third - time can help overcome that. By "re" doing one of the weeks you know was successful, sometimes that puts your mental state where your physical state needs it to be!

Krampus - if you can run 5 miles pretty easily - which it sounds like you can - you can do a 10k. That extra 1.2 miles will be easier in a group with your race-induced adrenaline going! I say go for the 10k - I bet you'll do great.

As for me - I strength trained this morning, and I'm really noticing a difference when I run - my knees and hips are far less sore, and my physical therapist said that's the goal of strength training the legs. So many runners don't work the legs as they figure running is enough - me included, pre-surgery - so now I'm becoming a convert!

I was going to run my treadmill intervals tomorrow but I somehow got suckered into signing up for the 5:30am spinning class. I've been wanting to try it for ever and the trainer at the gym said "why don't you" so I said sure... then freaked out. I did go into the spinning room and set up a bike so I could figure out the settings - I guess there's the seat height, the handlebar height, and the seat fore and aft (it slides horizontally). So I got it comfortable, tried standing up and pedaling and realized doing five minutes of that nearly finished me off - heaven knows what an hour will do to me! I'm hoping the instructor will understand that it's my first time (I'll tell him before class, of course!) and will let me just pedal slowly if I need a break. I hope I enjoy this - it looks like fun and a challenging workout and I need to introduce something new. Plus it's good cross training for running.

You are at the point where you are totally feeling the sluggish'ness from the running and it's playing mind games with you. The Best Thing to Learn about Running is that it does not always feel good to run and when you have reached this foundation of running you need to learn to recognize the mental mind games and start SQUASHING THEM! Stomp them out of your mentality. Stop talking to yourself about how crappy you feel and how it's easier to not run at all. Because YES it's easy to stop and it's easy to give up! You will Find your true inner strength when you challenge and push beyond these thoughts during this time. Next time you know you are going to fail, I dont care what you have to say to yourself, but you keep your *** moving! Get mean with yourself if you have to! Perhaps you need other positive uplifting mantras to keep you going! Sometimes I'll think about someone else hardship in life, you know maybe someone dying of cancer or maybe how inspirational it is to learn of someone triumphing and surviving far worse than a 3 mile run! Sorry if this sounds harsh but I was the all time class for having many many moments of mental mind games and heck once in a while I still do but they are infrequent now and I learned how to get past the mind play! Good Luck, you Have been doing this so you Continue to do this! :hug:

*WAVES*
Still Running here! Week 3 marathon training done! Tomorrow excited for an outdoor 6 miler, 30 degree temps might feel like spring, lol.

Hi all!

I've been struggling with binges and gaining, but running has been great this week. I've only gone out twice, but both times I kept at a good pace for a full hour. Tonight I was much faster than Tuesday night. I'm guessing I went maybe 5.5-6 miles.

You know what, I'm going to sign up for the 10k race in April. Even if I'm the slowest runner and I crap my pants or fall.

Can I join? Just did W1D1 on Tuesday night. Felt pretty good most of the time except calf pain during the last 3 run sections but I get that pain on the treadmill any time I go much over 3.0 mph so I was ready for it mentally.

I'm trying to do C25K in addition to training with a half marathon training team. Their slowest speed is 12-14 minute/miles and I get excited if I can do under 20 minute miles, but they've been tolerant and helpful thus far.

I'm enjoying getting back into my running this year.

Well, sort of. It's been a bit hot to enjoy really, and i've had to do it all at 0530am just to avoid the worst of the heat, anyway cooler today (but about to go to work) and should be cooler tomorrow, so planning my long run of the week at something over 90mins tomorrow morning (did 90mins last week and plan is to build gradually). Hurray!

I like planning a longer run and deciding where to go etc (although totally understand dreading it if it was on a treadmill. Yuk)

Good on you for picking the 10k Krampus. Bet you're nowhere near last place. That's the sort of thing i used to worry about, and needn't have, even though i AM slow. There'll be plenty slower than you. April is yonkers away anyway.

Jules - how was spin class? I'm a spin regular, usually 2 a week - it's good!

Ugh! What a crappy week! So my DS was sick and I missed Monday as I already mentioned. Well I made that up Tuesday, had a good 4 Wednesday and then I got sick:( I ran 2 miles Thursday, even though I usually don't run Thursdays, to help try to meet my goal of 25 this week, and then last night I barely slept due to aches and pains and missed this morning's run:( So technically I'm only behind about 1 mile of my usual because I ran Thursday, but I was hoping to be +5 on my usual. Anyway, I'm babbling...I'm hoping I'll feel well enough for my long run tomorrow and will get in a good 10-12, but deep down I know I should probably skip it, but my skinny girl attitude is saying don't you dare. We'll play it by ear. Besides the aches and pains which are subsiding it's above the neck so I'm trying to suck it up!

Sounds like you could do with a bit of a rest ncuneo. I'd say re-plan the schedule to allow for a couple of days off.

Did my long run this morning. 100mins trail which was good although fairly technical so pretty slow. Abiding by the 10% rule for increasing my long runs so hoping to stay away from injury, and should be back up to 2hrs by the end of feb....

So last week I skipped Wednesday's run to let my muscles recover a bit. Between running and spinning I'd been doing hard workouts every day for a week. Then Friday I just did three 5min intervals. I was thinking about how much more natural and comfortable my stride feels on the shorter, faster runs. So the game plan right now is to back track a bit on my distance, and start working on my speed. At the beginning of the month I had my big revelation that I could run longer if I just slowed down. But with each addition to my distance I slowed more and more. And the slower I ran, the more my legs ached. Slower may be easier cardiovascularly, but it's a lot harder muscularly. I have long legs, running at 4.5 mph (or anywhere under 5mph for that matter) just isn't natural for me.

I bought some new shoes yesterday and I'm eager to try them out. But I want to stick with my MWF running schedule, so they'll have to wait another day!

ETA- oh, and I had an NSV with the new shoes. The guy at the store looked at my old New Balances, measured my foot and brought out a pair of Asics. My first reaction was "oh no, I can't wear Asics, I have wide feet." To which he told me I don't have wide feet and my old shoes were too wide for me, which is why my laces were pulled about as tight as they'll go. I tried the Asics and, sure enough, they were not too narrow. The were even slightly big in the heel and I ended up with a pair of Brooks. Hooray for skinnier feet!

OK so today was my last run for January. I ran 6 miles today. i can hardly believe I did it. I was so worried. Yesterday I was scheduled for 4 miles and I could not run the whole thing. So to say that i was shocked and amazed with myself is an underestimate.
So my total for January was 46 miles. Moving fwd to February. Hoping the weather eases up here in New England. I am worried for when I need to transition to running outside that I won't be able to do it.

11 miles today, 6 yesterday, ending my month with 107 miles.

Happy Running!

Four miles yesterday, and my personal best time at that distance! Didn't add up my miles this month, but I think for February I will.

Yeah...something has to give. I went ahead and ran 9 on Saturday. It felt pretty good, but the rest of the day I was exhausted and just felt terrible. Sunday I felt ok, but today I'm feeling awful again and missed my run this am because I'm pretty sure my sinus' are going to explode and my lungs are killing me. I think this is the most running I've missed in a year and I'm having a really hard time with it. I know I need rest, but it's hard to give yourself permission to do that sometimes. I'm not too sure what my plans are this week. Well, I do, but I'm not sure anyone would approve :). I think taking today off was smart...I just have to keep telling myself that's it ok and it's better than turning this into something really serious if I don't allow my body time to heal.

Anywho - have a great week everyone, tomorrow's a new month!

Only ran 14 miles last week, not the 25-30 I was hoping for. I’m going to try for 20-25 miles this week. I did 4 today outside, even though there’s still snow on the ground. That’s 4 miles run for the month of February, shooting for 75-100 miles for the month.

Too hot here.

It was still 108F when i left work last night, and still 88F at midnight. Still had a 5km slow trot this morning (with some hills), but can't see me getting a long run in this week since the temps are staying put for a while.

The gym is nice and cool, so i'll do classes there instead (no treadmill i don't think though - too boring!)

ncuneo - have you considered finding some pilates classes or something like that? It would give you a rest, but at the same time is good for your running, with the core strength work and flexibility.

^Actually, I've been seriously considering adding yoga to my program.

I'm feeling quite a bit better today and am excited to get back into the swing of things!