Fortnightly Fitness Fridays - Exercise essentials, at home and away

With this post going out from Adelaide, and some longer stretches of travel on my horizon, I thought today would be a good time to reflect on my exercise 'essentials'. These are things that feature almost daily when I'm at home and which come with me when I'm away. There are no gym products or large pieces of equipment here - these are the basics and (I think) suit just about any activity you want to do.

When I'm travelling, my exercise is mostly in the form of running and walking. To keep things varied, I usually do a bit of both, alternate speeds and seek out hills. I always exercise in the morning, and unless I'm checking out of somewhere at 6am, I usually manage to find at least 30 minutes to do so.

Here are the things that feature during that morning time slot.

Running shoes

This is an obvious one, but I'm embarrased to admit that as recently as 5 years ago, I thought I could get the right shoes for my feet by picking them off the shelf with no help. My approach was to buy cross-trainers (not a good stance if I wanted to run in them...), by New Balance (because I'd heard they were a good brand for people who need support in their shoes...), in a nice colour.

It's not surprising I had knee difficulties whenever I tried to run.

4 years ago, I got running shoes fitted at a sports store and have never looked back. I spent 3 years in Mizuno Wave Renegade before switching to my current Brooks Ariel's, and both styles have worked well to balance my over-pronating (rolling in) feet. I replace them yearly and think I'll move back to Mizuno when I get my next pair in another month or so. The Brooks have been good but I found Mizuno to be a slightly better fit.

Cost per wear? Good running shoes are expensive, and prices in Australia are generally higher than in the US or Europe. Prices for supportive shoes also seem to be higher than those for people with well-behaved feet. Thus, my shoes usually cost me close to $250, although I normally manage to get some sort of discount on that. Given I wear them almost every day of the year, the cost works out at around 70c per wear.

Running shorts

I imagine that everyone has a style of shorts that works for them. I like these Everlast ones for three main reasons.

First, they are comfortable. The material is soft and wicks moisture away.

Second, there are two parts to the leg. The outer layer is relatively loose, whilst the inner layer is fitted like bike shorts. This is good if you want to sit down, cycle in them, or do any activity in which your shorts might ride up, but you don't feel comfortable walking around in tight bike shorts.

Third, they have a decent sized pocket on the front left side. It fits house keys, change, and even hotel swipe keys if you squeeze them in.

These days, I mostly wear these for gym work, cross-training, and shorter runs (see below for why). Up until this year I also wore them on long runs, and they remain my favourite choice for long runs when it's very hot.

Cost per wear? I have two pairs of these, one with white trim and one with pink trim. I've had them for 3 years now (!) and I think they cost me $40 each at the outset. Working on the conservative estimate of these being worn for exercise 200 days per year, the cost per wear is down to about 13c at this stage. I'm not sure if Everlast still makes them (I couldn't find them online), so I'll be trying to get a bit more wear of of them yet.

Skins compression tights

These are a recent addition to my list, and 6 months ago I would have called them a luxury and not an essential. However, I am now a convert.

I bought these three-quarter versions of the women's A200 Skins series after reading Liz's review of the tights on Last Chance Training. I'd been debating buying a pair for some time, and Liz's review prompted me to jump in and make the purchase.

These retail for around $110, so they aren't cheap. I had intended to buy just one pair, but about a month after my purchase Rebel Sport had them on sale at 30% off. It seemed too good a discount to pass up and so I added a second pair to my rotation. As it turned out, I ended up with the same colours as my shorts - one with white trim and one with pink trim.

I bought these because I have always experienced swelling in my legs after my long runs. The Skins company claims that their compression fabric improves circulation and thus facilitates muscle recovery and reduces swelling. It may be a placebo effect but I have noticed improvements in my muscles after running since wearing these. The tights are also comfortable, help with temperature control (the fabric wicks moisture effectively), and are one of the few styles of fitted leggings I'm happy to wear for running, cycling and to the gym. 

The only minor disadvantage of these is that the pocket is small and located at the back. It's difficult to get much into it, although I am grateful there's a pocket at all.

Cost per wear? I've only had these for a few months, and given their starting price, the cost per wear is currently at around $4. I expect these to last several years though.

Cap, phone carrier, and Map My Run app

These aren't strictly essential but they do make exercise easier and more enjoyable. 

The cap is an Adidas one I've had for years. It keeps the sun off my face when it's sunny, the rain off my face when it's rainy, and birds from swooping me if I happen to run near a protective mother bird during spring. Irrespective of season, wearing a hat helps to keep my hair contained.

I bought the phone carrier earlier this year after I moved to an Android mobile phone. I think it's designed for iPods as much as for phones, but whatever you put in it, it straps around your upper arm and has a clear plastic front with a fabric back.

I was really thrilled to discover that Map My Run, an online mapping program I've been using for years, has a free app for Android phones. It follows your route via GPS and will upload the details when you get into wifi range. For free! I now wear my phone on most of my runs and on our longer bike rides, and the mapping app is one of my favourite things about having a smart phone.

I am not sure if this app works outside of Australia (I am guessing it would, given it's not designed by an Australian company), but I enjoyed using it in Sydney earlier this year and in Adelaide this morning (thankfully during a break in Adelaide's rain!). It's nice to be able to see the map when I've finished and look at exactly where I went.

Cost per wear? The cap cost me $10 and I think I must be down to 1c per wear by this stage. The phone carrier was $30 and is probably tracking at around $1 per wear.

So there we have it - the things I use just about every day, at home and when away.

On a final, non-exercise note...I went back to Menchie's. Cookies and cream, cake batter, sugar-free peanut butter, and red velvet flavoured soft-serve frozen yoghurt was definitely better than the food on offer at this evening's conference social event. It was also just a tad too sweet, but that has had the benefit of fueling an evening of reading work documents.

What are your exercise essentials?

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Fortnightly Fitness Fridays - Why do I find 15 minutes of basketball harder than 30 minutes of running?

We have established that I am not very good at ball sports.

The thing is, though, I love someone who would play them several times a week if he could. Mr Bite isn't one for gyms, or even organised ball games, but if you take him to a park with a football or basketball (or to a tennis court with tennis balls and racquets), he is happy.

As a result, sometimes I play ball sports despite not being good at them. Generally, this ends up being more enjoyable than I expect it to be, in large part due to Mr Bite having fun despite my lack of skill, which allows me to have fun despite my lack of skill. Also, we don't necessarily play by the rules. In the case of basketball, we don't even play a game in any formal sense of the word.

Nonetheless, I am often left in pain afterwards.

It is quite rare for me to experience sore muscles. Tight muscles, yes, but sore muscles, no. The exceptions are after basketball and tennis.

Last Sunday, we played basketball for perhaps 20 minutes. Please note - 20 minutes. It was fun, we followed it with a low-key walk, and it made for an enjoyable afternoon.

That night, I had sore muscles down the left side of my neck into my left shoulder. As I get tight back and  shoulder muscles quite frequently, and neck-related headaches semi-regularly, this in itself wasn't too unusual.

On Monday, though, my left wrist and forearm were sore to the extent that it hurt to type (!), my upper arms were sore, and lifting my arms above my head was impressively painful. That was unusual.

This prompted me to try and determine just what basketball was doing to leave me in such a state. For someone who does planned exercise most days, it is a little dispiriting to think that 20 minutes of casual ball shooting could leave me feeling so sore.

(Mr Bite, of course, was entirely fine.)

After reading a few articles, it would seem that there are four main upper body contributors to basketball shooting:

• Triceps (back of the upper arm; they work to push weight away from you, and are strengthened with exercises such as push ups)
• Biceps (front of the upper arm; they work to pull weight towards you, and are strengthened by exercises such as bicep curls with hand weights)
• Deltoids (shoulder muscles; they work to elevate the arms and guide their movement when lifted at the front of the body, and are strengthened by exercises such as lateral arm raises with weights)
• Wrist and forearm muscles

Source (Wikimedia Commons)

The rest of the body is also involved, with leg muscles used for moving around the court and for pushing off when shooting the ball, and the core (abdominal / back) muscles used to stabilise movement. For me, though, I think it's safe to say that the problem lies in my arms, not my legs or core.

Source (Wikimedia Commons)

On reading about the muscles involved in basketball shooting, it suddenly made perfect sense that my arms would be sore after 20 minutes of it. I am hopeless at push ups, can't do chin ups to save my life, and tend to avoid weights-based exercises that call on the triceps and deltoids because I find them so hard.

On reflection, that may not be the most sensible strategy for dealing with poor upper body strength.

The new plan? Push ups, barbell raises, lateral arm raises, and any machines I can find in the gym that say they target triceps, deltoids or the forearms. At least twice a week. Even if I have to start on the lowest weight possible and a tiny number of repetitions (and let's face it, I will).

I am keen to shoot for injury-free basketball within 3 months!

Do you have any muscle groups that aren't quite up to certain activities? 
Or do you have any more general basketball hints to share with me? I could use any advice going, believe me.

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Fortnightly Fitness Fridays - I ran for a reason

Last Sunday I ran the 14km Run for a Reason race in Perth. This is the third year that the race has been held, and it provides Perth with a second fun run option outside of the City to Surf in August.

This was the first time I have run this course, and only the second time I have run any formal running event. The first was the 2009 City to Surf, a 12km course, which was about 18 months after I got into running. In early 2008, I had plenty of stamina for low and moderate intensity exercise, but couldn't have run even 2km.

The City to Surf race was the best run of my life. I ran faster than I had been running in training (averaging about 11.4km / hour), I loved the atmosphere and the thrill of running on roads that were closed for the event, and the 63 minutes of running time just flew by.

I don't know how it ended up being 2.5 years from that race to this one (injuries had something to do with it, but not all), but  I'm glad to have finally done a second formal run.

Despite that, if the City to Surf face was my best run ever, it has to be said that this may have been one of my worst. After getting up at 6am and leaving for the train station at 6.30am, my plans to arrive in good time were thwarted by a lack of shuttle buses from the city train station to the start of the race (about a 5 minute bus ride). There were thousands of people queuing for buses and no where near enough to get us all shuttled across in a timely manner.

By the time I got to the starting grounds, it was 7.45am and the race started at 8am. I still needed to brave the bathroom queues and throw my bag at the bag collection area, and it ended up being 8.01am as I came out of the toilets. The first running group was just heading off, and I was meant to be in the second group.

Suffice to say, by the time I made it across the starting line, I was pretty frazzled. In fact, my anxiety system was firing at full speed. The plan to stagger the start by speed groups also fell apart, as many people were in the same position as me and hadn't made the start line for their allocated group. Conversely, a number of walkers seemed to have set off with the first, 'fastest' group, so my first few kilometers were spent trying to overtake walkers whilst being overtaken by faster runners trying to get out to the front.

I ran the first 2 kilometers at an average of 12km / hour, which is about 2 km / hour faster than the speed I was aiming to average for the full race. I knew I was going out too fast but it wasn't until 10 minutes in that I managed to moderate that down.

Indeed, after the stressful start, it took me until the 8km mark to settle into a steady pace and actually feel at home with the running and my breathing. I had expected the first half of the race to be easy and the second half more challenging, but it was definitely the other way around.

I'm in this picture, but so are about a hundred other people...

I also found that my usual strategy of running on an empty stomach, something resulting from all of my exercise being done first thing in the morning, didn't generalise so well to the slightly longer run with the travel time before hand. I felt quite nauseous in the last 2 kilometers, and I think that can be blamed on lack of fuel. Lesson learnt: if I want to run more than 10 - 12km, I need to eat, not just drink, first!

Despite these challenges, the run could also be called one of the best in my life. I have never run 14km before, in race form or otherwise, with my longest previous race being 13km. The atmosphere was great, and the route was a good one. Cheerleaders and music along the course were pretty fun too. Most importantly, I did run it, despite it being hard. I'm pretty proud of that.

In the end, I even hit the time I was hoping for, averaging 10.12 km / hour to finish in 1 hour and 23 minutes (plus 8 seconds, if we're being specific). Clearly I ran some kilometers pretty slowly, given the speedy start!

The rest of Sunday was spent in a semi-exhausted state, eating a whole batch (!) of pikelets, and reading in the sunshine. By Tuesday I was pondering when I could next run a race, and I'm already thinking alone the lines of "Just another 7km and you could run a half marathon!".

These pikelets, with yoghurt and thawed frozen strawberries.

Picture many more pikelets over the course of the day.

If you're a runner, do you run races regularly or are you like me and pretty inconsistent? What would be your best and worst runs?

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Fortnightly Fitness Fridays - Pink laces give away

Did you have any coloured shoelaces as a child?

I had purple ones when I was about 8 years old (in 1991 or so), which came threaded through black and purple running shoes. I loved the shoes because of the laces, and used to enjoy wearing them with assorted purple clothing. Black bike shorts and a purple t-shirt. A pair of purple dungarees / overalls that I wore to bits. Even, I regret to say, with a short purple skirt worn over white leggings. The joys of fashion in the late 80s and early 90s!

I no longer wear dungarees or purple skirts over white leggings, but I do still appreciate coloured shoelaces. And as of this week, I'm very pleased to have some pink ones, complements of my Sweat Pink Ambassador pack arriving.

I am still deliberating over which of my shoes should have pink laces, but it's an enjoyable kind of deliberation.

From left to right: My Brooks 'real' running shoes, old New Balance cross-trainers that I wear for gardening and trips to the park, and some Reeboks that I wear casually

At heart, it would seem that I'm still an 8-year-old but that pink is my new purple.

Given that I don't have shoes enough for all of these laces, and sharing is generally more fun that not sharing, I would like to give away 8 pairs of pink shoe laces to any fellow Australians who would like them. If there are more than 8 people I'll pick at random. Just leave a comment if you are interested!

As for me, I'll be admiring my shoes.

What about you - do you have any multi-coloured laces? Or any in the past?

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Fortnightly Fitness Fridays - Musings on the Olympics

It is 12 weeks today until the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. I don't know about you, but I'm starting to get excited.

You see, something odd happens to me every four years. Most of the time, and my recent semi-conversion to Australian Rules Football aside, I have very little interest in sporting events. I am interested in the big marathons when they're on, but they aren't even broadcast on free-to-air Australian TV. I adore watching gymnastics, but again we don't see much of that between the Olympic games. Most of the time, sport tends to pass me by.

When the Olympics starts up, that all changes. In addition to gymnastics, I enjoy the diving and am inspired by the running events. The nice thing, though, is that my enthusiasm actually goes beyond those specific sports. I like the whole event, the whole atmosphere associated with the Olympics. I just love it.

A previous London Olympics - source

With this, I also start to become somewhat grandiose about my own athletic abilities. Don't get me wrong - I don't start thinking I'm going to make it to the subsequent (or any) Olympics. That would move me beyond grandiose to frankly delusional. However, I start thinking that I could do bigger things in an athletic sense. I become enthusiastic about the athletic world and quite captivated by the abilities of the human body.

I run a bit harder. I lift slightly heavier weights. I find myself doing cartwheels. Last Olympics, in fact, I turned a great many cartwheels because my PhD office came off a long hallway that was perfect for cartwheeling after hours. It added great fun to the hours I spent working on weekends, and no one else was ever the wiser.

This enthusiasm doesn't tend to last much longer than the Olympics, but for one month every four years, I am completely into the spirit of sport and all that goes with it.

This year, I have started thinking about it early. If I have this boost in motivation, perhaps I should aim to put it to good use. You know, do something more than cartwheel down work corridors.

This year, here is what I would like to do:

• Run the 14km Run for a Reason race on Sunday May 27th this year. I have already signed up for this (eek!). I'm running under a work-arranged team, which means all money raised goes to medical research. 

• Cycle at least once per week, outside. This really isn't that hard. When I do it I love it, but when I get out of the routine weeks end up passing before I get on the bike.

• On a related note, buy a basket or other carrier for my bike. I alternate between driving, walking and cycling to the weekend fruit and vegetable markets I visit, and cycling would be far be the best option if only I could sensibly carry what I buy. This is about as far removed from the Olympics as you can get, but it's exercise-related and thus I list it here!

• Do dedicated stretching or a stretch-based class once per week. I stretch after every workout but if I'm not going to make it to a pilates or yoga session (and in all likelihood, I'm not), I would like to at least do something more focused myself on a regular basis.

And there we have it - not the Olympics, that is for sure, but things I would like to do nonetheless. I haven't listed cartwheels but I'm quite keen for some of those to make it in too :-)

How do you feel about the Olympics? Do you have any sporting goals of your own for the next few months?

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Fortnightly Fitness Fridays - A Sweat Pink Post

For a little while now I have been aware that I present this blog as being about "food, health, fitness..." (and so on, see column to the right) but post on fitness and exercise relatively rarely. I have some posts on the topic of course, but they appear intermittently and with no particular structure.

This blog is never going to be all, or even mostly, about fitness. That's just not what I enjoy writing about the most. I like talking about food, and creating new dishes, and sharing the results. At the same time, exercise is a major part of my life, and a part that I consider instrumental in keeping me sane. I would like to mention it a little more than I currently do.

Recently, a solution to this minor dilemma landed in my lap. The lovely co-founders of Fit Approach asked if I would be interested in being one of their 'Sweat Pink Ambassadors'.

To give you a sense of the philosophy behind Fit Approach, I'd like to share a quote from their website:

"Do you have a passion for inspiring others on their journeys to health? Do you believe that strong is the new skinny, pink is the new black, and that a positive attitude and whole foods are a healthier route to happiness than self-loathing and 100-calorie snack packs?" [Source]

The last part, in particular, rings absolutely true for me. It is incredibly nice to be connected to like-minded women, and to know that a group has been created to promote this philosophy.

With this Fit Approach involvement, it seemed like a good time to organise the way I approach exercise-related topics on this blog. My goal? From now on, once a fortnight on a Friday, I will do a fitness-related post. These are likely to be varied and linked to whatever activities I've been doing or thinking about over the previous 2 weeks. The activities may be formal or informal, exercise in the high-intensity sense or just a walk or cycle outdoors somewhere.

Today, I thought I'd share some of what I've been reading lately about running stride or cadence. I've never thought a lot about how many steps I take each minute when I run - I pay attention to how far and how fast, but not my specific stride rate.

It turns out, there is a remarkable amount written on 'optimal' cadence, where cadence is the number of steps you take per minute. It is accepted that everyone is going to run slightly differently, but striking around 180 steps per minute, 90 on each foot, is believed to be more efficient than lower stride rates, and to reduce the likelihood of injury whilst also increasing running performance. Not surprisingly, therefore, it is a cadence that is common to elite runners.

To clarify what 180 strides per minute feels like, in one second you would need to have your left foot hit the ground, then your right food, and then your left foot again. In other words, it is quick! Most people don't run at that rate naturally, and doing so requires your legs to stay close to your body and for each step to make contact with the ground only briefly. This, in part, is what accounts for the lower injury rate with this quicker stride.

I was curious to know what my 'natural' cadence is, so I set out to count my strides on a treadmill this week. My most comfortable speed when running is 11 km / hour (6.8 miles / hour), and so I set the treadmill to that speed and counted my foot strikes for a minute. I did this a few times and counted about 160 quite consistently. 

I then adjusted my stride to make three steps to one second, and was able to run at a cadence of 180 without too much difficulty. It did feel odd, but manageable. And the impressive thing was, it also did feel better. I had to shorten my steps quite noticeably, but it felt lighter and smoother and I could imagine running that way over long distances. I'm not sure how I will go without the timer of the treadmill to guide me, but it is definitely something I'll be paying attention to. If it can help my knees and hips stay uninjured, it will certainly be an adjustment that would be worth the effort!

If you run, do you know what your stride rate is? Or had you heard of 180 steps being a recommended number?

I'd also love to hear your thoughts on how these fortnightly fitness posts unfold. If you have suggestions or ideas, please let me know!

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