Running from Zombies

Last week was all about getting my fitness levels back up to scratch without overdoing the running and risking hurting my knee again.

Monday: Went to Ally‘s gym with him and signed up for a 2 week membership. Stuck around for a bit and did a short workout – 20 mins on the bike at around 80% max HR, 10 mins on the treadmill (just over a mile) to test my knee, and then a very brief stint in the freeweight section.

Tuesday: Back to the gym, just for cardio this time. I did an hour on the bike at 70% max HR and 3k on the treadmill at 6 min/km pace. Feeling the effects of too long doing nothing. Felt great when I was done though!

Wednesday: Third day at the gym. I ran a 33 minute 5k (6 minutes on, 1 minute off), stretched, did a couple of the resistance machines then onto the bike, where I did 30 minutes at 65% max HR and then 10 minutes at around 82% max.

Thursday: In my attempt to get the most out of my 2 week gym membership I decided to try out the pool. It’s quite small, especially as aqua class was on but there were only a few swimmers so plenty of room. Not knowing how long the pool was I kept going til I ran out of time (Ally was in the gym upstairs). I found out later that the pool was 20m long so had covered 1km.

Saturday: Had intended to go to archery today but a bad night’s sleep and a niggling shoulder problem persuaded me to stay at home. In the end I decided that a run might make me feel better so I headed out with the intention of doing a bit further than Wednesday’s 5k, but not by much. In the end I did a 6.5k route in 43:28. I really opened up my stride in the last 400m, pushing around 14-15kmph and it felt really good. Starting to feel more confident about the race.

Sunday: Basketball today. Not quite as good as last week, I couldn’t quite seem to get the picks, but a good time nonetheless. Annoying blister on my thumb from the push rim :-(

Total Run: 16.2km

As you can see, I tend to do my HR zone training on the bike in the gym rather than running…purely so I can concentrate on running instead of looking at my watch. Throughout the week I’ve done a bit more research on heart rate zones and talked to Ally about it. At some point I plan to go back to the track and try to work out my max HR more accurately.