Janathon day 2: Misfit and Sworkit

Christmas (and the preceding few months) was a rather excessive time, and I'm ashamed that I've gained about a stone in weight (from carelessness and indolence). I reinstalled MyFitnessPal on my phone after Christmas, and I'm trying to lose that weight and get more active in the run up to starting marathon training later this month. I received a great gift of body analysis scales for Christmas, which measure not only my weight but also my body fat %, body water %, and BMI. I'm already a bit hooked on my body fat %.

When I installed MyFitnessPal, I noticed there were a few apps that you could link to your account, to help keep track of exercise and activity during the day. One was Strava (which I already use to track my running), one was Misfit, and another was Sworkit.

Misfit rang a bell: I bought my mother-in-law and sister-in-law a Misfit Flash each for Christmas. I inevitably had to set them both up; I quite liked the simplicity of the device and was rather jealous! So, I treated myself to a Misfit Flash for Janathon ;) I have a pedometer on my phone but I was curious to find out how active or inactive I am during a "normal" day; hopefully this device will motivate me to walk home the long way. Plus, it was about half the price of similar devices (here's a good blog post comparing activity monitors).

To Janathon, and today I decided to try out Sworkit (swortkit.com). This app is just brilliant. It builds random circuit training sessions that can be customised according to which body area you want to work on or type of exercise you want to do (eg, legs, cardio, Pilates, or stretching) and how much time you have (you can work out for an hour or just 5 minutes). I opted for a 20 minute full body workout, which included a lot of push ups, sit ups, and high knees. Each exercise lasted 30 seconds, with a photo of the exercise as a reminder (and a video to watch if that didn't help) and voiceovers to tell you what the next exercise is and give you a 5 second countdown. I was relieved to discover there were 30 second breaks every so often (you can switch these off for a "pro" workout, and increase the duration of each exercise). I'm definitely going to try out a few more of these workouts during Janathon.

I finished off my workout with a 21 minute walk on the treadmill (1 mile), while listening to The Saturdays Greatest Hits. Seriously, I derive much motivation to exercise from looking at a picture of Frankie Bridge.

So... body stats. Do I really want to publish these? I guess it would be good to track changes, give me motivation to actually work on them, and I'm fairly sure only me and my friend Ralph read this blog. So, Ralph, here you go:

Weight: 150.6 lb (10 stone 10 lb, 68 kg; I averaged around 140 lb in 2014)
BMI: 25.7 (over 25 pushes me into "overweight" category)
Body fat: 32.2% (any % greater than 30% is regarded as high)
Body water: 48.7% ("ideal" range for women is 45-60%)

Lots of room for improvement!

Roger Bannister 60th anniversary mile

Bannister anniversary

Tuesday May 6th was the 60th anniversary of Roger Bannister breaking the 4 minute mile barrier. To mark the occasion, Dan Wymer (@running_dan_w) asked 60 people to run a mile and blog or tweet about the run. Read his blog post about the day.



I signed up to run a mile knowing it would be the day after MK Marathon, so I wasn't expecting to run a fast time. My physio Kieran had advised me to go for a walk on the Tuesday to flush out lactic acid, so a mile jog seemed a good alternative. I went straight after I'd dropped my children at school, and managed a fairly respectable 10:33 minutes for the mile.

Post-marathon recovery

It was a good idea to jog on Tuesday, because my legs felt much less stiff when I got home. I had another cold bath for 10 minutes, then donned a fetching pair of compression tights to wear for the rest of the day. I went for another couple of short walks in the afternoon too (1.5 miles in total), followed by my regular Pilates class in the evening. Drank plenty of water throughout the day, to rehydrate properly from Monday (not a chore though, I was really thirsty), and logged my food on myfitnesspal to make sure I didn't go mad and eat a bucket of pasta.

On Wednesday my legs felt fully recovered, apart from my sore knee, which will take a while to heal. I took my physio's advice to rest fully on Wednesday. I drank lots of water and ate sensibly, logging everything on myfitnesspal so I didn't gorge on chocolate!

I'm feeling ready to brave running club this evening, will be good to have an easy jog with the beginners to test my knee. The intermediates are planning their own Roger Bannister anniversary mile, a series of 100m sprint intervals as a relay, to see if we can beat 4 minutes! I might hold the stopwatch...

Wednesday April 24: return to circuits

I've not done any training for almost a week, and no circuit training for over 2 weeks, so I was a bit nervous about tonight.

First though, swimming. Took my children to their lessons and had a quick 15 minute swim myself. Managed 14 lengths, which is 450 metres. I didn't push today though.

Next, circuits. Layout was 4x4, with every "4" repeated (so 8x4 really). Started with side planks, jogging, and inverted row; next, ab curls, star jumps, tricep dips, and lunges; then Russian twists, calf raises, kettlebell swing (16 kg), and bicep curls; finally, skipping, press ups, back extensions, and plank.

Focused on technique tonight rather than progression or speed, but was pleased to discover I hadn't lost that much fitness.

Exhausting. Sweating profusely from jogging onwards. Really must remember to take a towel... But I burnt 300 odd calories at circuits and around 100 swimming, not too shabby.

I've started logging food and exercise on myfitnesspal again, and I've lost 3lb so it's definitely useful.