The FastDay Forum

Sounds like you've recovered well after your food poisoning, Pete!

Yes - very pleased and quite surprised. It was almost certainly Norovirus from the research I have done since...

I've just done my second day of week 2 of the C25K podcast. I seem to be getting in to it, which is a bit of a surprise because I never would've thought that running would be my thing. But I suppose usually when I've been running before, I've been running for a train and carrying lots of stuff. Running just because it actually fun. Do people do other forms of exercise? At the moment, I'm just going for these runs but I'm starting to feel that my upper body is getting a little neglected. I probably just need to arrange to go swimming a bit more often.

Today's a fast day, and I managed 30 mins on teh treadmill without any ill effects.

I'm not that keen a runner! My main exercise is dancing (I do Scottish Country Dancing at least once a week, and am on the demo team), and walking the dogs. I like yoga, but don't do it regularly. I used to really enjoy the Les Mills type classes at the gym, but I gave up my membership last year when I wasn't going often enough to make it financially worthwhile.

Elaine78 the NHS also do strength and flex podcasts which I have heard are quite good. Lots of people do them on the days in between running and they give the rest of your body a workout.

Started fast this morning, and then struggled with my breathing. But I think I got under the 10 minute mile pace, which I'm really pleased about. Its almost as if the more you run, the better a runner you become - who knew?

Well done Melanie - yet another PB - it is supposed to get better with practice/training, but I am on the other side of the curve now, unfortunately!
However, this morning's run went very well and I equalled my 2013 PB of 23:37, which I achieved at the end of my first week of 5:2 when I was 9 lbs heavier!
Feeling good at this new (and hopefully minimum) weight and looking to improve again next week - I have to because OH is snapping at my heels in percentage terms and she beat me last week (I have to run 4 minutes faster than her!)

I'm away from home and managed to find a flat bit of Wales and some time when it wasn't raining too hard, and went for a run by the sea. I had measured the section on Google Earth and each lap is just over 1K.I ran for 40 mins before the rain REALLY started coming down, by which time I had done either 4 or 5 laps (lost count must be my age)
On the strength of this I have registered for parkrun and am going to give it a go next week. Before that I'm planning some early morning sessions on the running track at my son's school, to check I can do the distance (although if I can't count to 5 then counting 12.5 laps round a 400m track is going to be a challenge)

Great stuff Sian - you will be very welcome whichever parkrun you attend, and you don't normally have to count laps - just follow the person in front! Good luck next week...

31.15. Knocked more than a minute off my last PB. Astonished.

Sian, come along, you'll be made very welcome, no matter what your ability.

I did 27:41 this week which is some 10 seconds slower than last week and 43 seconds off my last PB. Our Parkrun at Swindon is two laps. I was running alongside the 25 minute pacer for most of the first lap until we came to the slope. I find that this always takes up a lot of energy and I tend to start on the second and final lap that bit slower if I push too hard up this damn slope.

I found myself well behind the pacer and started to get overtaken by a lot of the people that I had already passed on the first lap.By the time I came in for the second sortie of the slope I had slowed considerably and came in to the final 1/2k well behind where I wanted to be and gasping for every breath.

I usually do a 10k training run on Friday morning and did so the last time I managed a pb. My last pb came the day before I did a competative 10k which I finished in under 1 hour.My last pb was also 15 seconds faster than my previous pb so I'm wondering if the reason for the increase in performance compared to previous and subsequence weeks was diet related.

I'm usually a low carb dieter which I combine with 5:2 but the weekend of my pb was Easter and I relaxed my diet by having some hot cross buns on Good Friday and some Chocolate Easter egg plus we had fish and chips on Good Friday Evening. For me this is a substantial increase in my carb/sugar intake. This continued on Saturday after parkrun with more hot X buns and more Easter Egg, I even had some potato with my evening meal.

Runners tend to go for carbs because carbohydrate requires less oxygen per kilocalorie of energy produced than fats or proteins. This can increase your aerobic capacity. At Parkrun on Easter Saturday I felt a lot more energised and finished the run a lot less breathless than usual.

My dilema is that I tend to do well on a low carb diet for weight loss. coupled with this, I have had problems with higher carb diets in terms of symptoms of insulin resistance so I wouldn't want to go back to eating a high carb diet. I want to look into how I can include carbs in my diet at intervals so that I can achieve the occasional PB and do well in the odd race that I enter.

Hi Mark, have you read Peter Attia's blog about athletic performances on a ketotic diet? He avoids carbs to stay in fat-burning mode and can apparently ride his bike hard for hours without extra energy (gels etc) just water. Modern triathletes are using fat-burning techniques and training whilst fasted to improve fat conversion rates. When I used to do long-duration events there was a philosophy of bleed-out/carbo load to maximize glycogen stocks during the week before the event but this new approach makes a lot more sense as fat stores are much higher than glycogen. Without the preparation and training to burn fat though you "hit the wall" after a couple of hours when all the glycogen is gone..
I could not do 10k the day before a parkrun - although I did walk 5 miles yesterday to get my joints working again. Try resting Thurs/Fri and making sure your energy stores are topped up before trying for a PB next time.

Hi Pete, I understand what you're saying and I do have reservations about abandoning a low carb, ketogenic approach. I often train in a fasted state doing 6 or 8 mile runs.Performance wise, I can keep going at a steady but not a particulrly fast pace. I can get to a stage when I can run quite comfortably at around 10k per hour and keep it going for 8 or more miles. I can't however ignore the fact that my best parkrun and 10k performance came at a time of a serious lapse in my low carb WOE.

15 seconds improvement on a pb is quite significant, I'm almost convinced it was as a result of carb intake. I've been reading a blog about training low (low carb)and competing high (high carb). For me, this would mean carrying on as normal but repeating the carb binge just before a race or parkrun, i.e. once a month or so.

I might abandon my 10k training session on a Friday and change it to another day. It might be that the increased performance was just a result of other factors so if I repeat the experiment and don't achieve the results then I'll not persue it further.

The science is quite intreaging regarding VO2max and carbs being more efficient at supplying energy. The thing that I noticed having carb loaded was not being so breathless during the run and being able to sprint further and faster to achieve a better position and time.

Yes to both train low/race high and avoiding hard training for a couple of days before a PB attempt. The only problem is that it is easy to get into the resting habit, and resting before and instead of training!
An old friend of mine used to say "To rest is to rust" - but as I get older I cannot recover quickly enough to avoid resting before & after hard exercise...

Thank you, Melanie Cheeks, for pointing me to this thread. Running wise I have done (2012) 10K, 10 mile and the Chicago Marathon (2013) the Gasparilla 1/2 Marathon, a 5K and still on calendar a repeat of the same 10 mile and another marathon in November.

I use the Nike+ running app on my Iphone. I don't have a fancy running watch (yet) so this gives me the mile by mile breakdown, the map of my run and allows me to have a little friendly game of "tag" with my husband.