Dawn Patrol + Janathon #15 + S&C

Early start for the Global Therapies Dawn Patrol runners. We headed down to the leisure centre at 5.50am, meeting four others and doing the Derbyshire Level loop. We were rewarded for our early start with the hoots from two owls, how delightful. Total run for me and Tim was 8km which includes about 2.5km to get to the leisure centre and back. A lovely 51mins with great company chatting all the way round.

Back home and I went straight into the 'home gym' to do my strength and conditioning session. Today's set was:

3 rounds of:
20x kettlebell swing, 20kg
10x deadlift, 40kg
10x goblet squat, 16kg
1min rest

then 3 rounds, no rest:
2mins weighted step up, bodyweight+20kg
1min plank
1min back extensions

This was all followed by the barefoot training, strengthening and balance exercises for the research project we're taking part in, plus a 20min barefoot (wearing fivefingers) walk.

Total exercise time: 2hrs 15mins.

Janathon #13 Barefoot

After almost a fortnight of daily running I'm feeling good, perhaps a little tired in the legs today but that is down to a cold icy run onto Bleaklow yesterday. I had earmarked today for a loop round Mossy Lea that's just over 5km; a mixed terrain run which includes a 3km gradual incline, ending with a slightly steeper bit. It's a nice challenge to keep running at a good pace without it being a really tough run (that is until I add in a 1km hill rep with about 200m ascent). Anyway, I decided to have a recovery day and do my barefoot run - just over 2km at 180bpm. I've also done the plyometric training for the barefoot research study we're taking part in, and a strength and conditioning session this morning.

Janathon #10

Today was going to be a 10-15km run with a friend around Ladybower reservoir...we have a regular running date each Thursday, which this week was swapped for today. Sadly my mate woke up feeling rubbish...her husband has had flu so it looks like it's going round their house. As I'm running every day I decided to swap my longer run today and will do it tomorrow. Instead of the long run today I just did my barefoot run, which I would have been doing as well as the long run. This is a sensible approach given I'm running everyday this month, as rest is good for muscles.

I like having flexibility in my training, but at the same time I am starting to hanker after a bit of speed in my runs. Lately it's started to feel like I've been plodding a bit too much. That will ultimately mean a period of weekly hill reps and speed sessions to get my cadence up, to push my cardiovascular system and muscular strength so they adapt and get stronger. I've got a race coming up on the 25th (Kinder Trial which I did back in 2011 though I'm hoping there won't be snow on the ground this year!) so over the next few weeks I'll be adding slightly longer runs to each week. Looking at other things in the diary I reckon I shall be in a position to put in two structured training sessions per week starting from the last week of January. I'd like to start it a bit sooner, but at the same time I want to ensure that this run-a-day-Janathon challenge is completed sensibly and without an increase to intensity as well as frequency of runs. Until the end of the month I'm going to put in a few fartlek type sessions, just adding short bursts of speed randomly, and hill reps in an unstructured way as and when I am ascending.

Need to find an empty wall somewhere near home so I can practice these more often. Shoulder/upper body and core strength are great for runners to develop

Barefoot Running Research: weeks 3 & 4 summary

The last few weeks has included Christmas and a week or so of illness. As such, the latter was the only stumbling block in the daily stretching and walking exercises. I reckon I only missed a couple of days, and managed to shift one of the barefoot runs from week 3 into week 4. I'd like to hope that the few days I missed with the intervention exercises won't impact the research. This week has been good, getting out for my walks, doing the stretching, plyometric exercises and such. The walk this morning felt good, I'm no longer feeling like I need a break from forefoot strike on the walk so there must be some muscular strength gains occurring. There won't be much change to the programme now, just a very gradual increase in the distance of the runs in the next few weeks, then an increase to 3 runs per week in the final couple of weeks.

Having done the exercises for 4 weeks now it just feels like a natural part of my day. I reckon that the habit has been well and truly fixed. In addition, and nothing to do with the research, or barefoot running, but I've also started some specific work to strengthen my shoulders. I have a natural tendency (as do most people) to have forward rounded shoulders so I've written myself a programme of stretches and strengthening exercises to work on reducing this imbalance. I'm doing these exercises on alternate days and will see how it goes.