Filed under: 10k, British Military Fitness, Bupa Great Capital Run, Nike Human Race, food, gym, nike+ sportband, running, running gear | Tags: 10k challenge, British Military Fitness, Bupa Great Capital Run, Nike Human, running
I pretty much run at one speed: 10k/6 miles per hour, whether I’m running 5k or a half marathon. I’m a great pacer at that speed and can slow down other people if they set off too fast, or speed them up if they’re lagging. But that’s been my speed for the eight or so years that I’ve been running reasonably regularly, and I’m not exactly progressing. It hasn’t bothered me much in the past, but seeing the likes of my little brother doing a 40-odd minute 10k with apparent ease only months after taking up running makes me think I should push myself a bit more.
Doing British Military Fitness classes is starting to take me out of my comfort zone, making me sprint and do hill reps that I wouldn’t normally bother with. I’m already noticing a bit of difference when running, and am definitely capable of tackling hills with a bit more gusto than previously.
So one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to get my 10k time down during the course of the year. I’m aiming for around the 50-minute mark, but I haven’t got a clue how feasible that is. I’m going to use the gym to gauge my progress, because I can accurately measure the distance. (The Nike+ Sportband really isn’t that accurate. Maybe I should have asked Father Christmas for a GPS thingy).
I do try to get into the habit of writing down my times, but don’t always remember. Here’s a few:
20 July – 57:35 (Bupa Great Capital Run)
31 August – 60:14 (Nike Human Race)
13 September – 60:00 (gym)
30 September – 56:02 (gym)
today – 55:24 (gym)
The times over the past couple of months do indicate I’m going in the right direction, but there is clearly some way to go. This morning’s effort was hard work, especially around the hip flexors/top of my quads – perhaps I can do some work on stretching those out more. I had a long hot shower at the gym but, by the the time I got home, I felt weak and shivery. I don’t feel unwell in any other respect, despite the germs flying around my office, so I guess I just needed some food. I walloped down a power smoothie (banana, Skippy peanut butter, yoghurt, milk) followed by scrambled eggs on toast, and am feeling much better now. 
Filed under: British Military Fitness, food | Tags: British Military Fitness, LSQ2
I didn’t want to go to British Military Fitness last night. I’d gone out to put some fuel in my car at 5.30, and it was pretty damn cold. My boss asked me what I was up to as he left, and when I told him I was off to my class, he looked at me as if I was insane and said: “My god Jo, you’re just like a bloke I met today. He’s planning to row across the Atlantic”. Not really, Chris,” I said, “I’m just going for a jog around the park.” He doesn’t do much in the way of exercise, so I suppose it’s all relative.
Anyway, inspired by the man about to row across the Atlantic, I changed and drove to the park. It was Keiran the Engineer’s last class before he departs for Afghanistan and he armed us all with 10 or 15kg “power packs” and had us marching across the park with them, before making us charge around doing shuttle runs and hill sprints, interspersed with lots of leg squats and lunges – all with the packs on our shoulders.
The temperature must have dropped significantly while we were out, as the ground was dry when we started, got damp during the course of the hour, and was crisp with frost by the time we were doing our stretches. But it was a beautiful evening. The not-quite-full-moon lit up the park, and the stars sparkled. It was marred only slightly by the smell of sewage seeping out of the ground.
Like Phil, I doubt that I managed to offset much of my team Christmas lunch today at LSQ2: crab and prawn timbale with avocado mayonnaise; sea bass Wellington with wasabi lemon butter sauce and crab oil; apple crumble and cinnamon ice cream. Oh and wine. (Managed to turn down a mince pie, but only because of the wafer-thin-mint potential).
So, better get to bed and head to the gym in the morning before I load up more calories at lunch with the girls tomorrow!
Filed under: British Military Fitness, bleep test, circuits, running | Tags: bleep test, British Military Fitness, running
Already aching from yesterday’s DIY circuits session, it was with a degree of reluctance that I struggled into my tights, thermal top, windproof jacket, gloves and hat for tonight’s British Military Fitness class. I don’t know what had got into the instructors, but they were really mean.
Very quick warm-up, then straight into hill reps on a steep grassy slope about 30m long (my estimate; could be way out). At the top, we had to do press-ups facing back down the slope, sit-ups facing up the slope, and so on. Basically all designed to cause maximum pain. God knows how many reps we did, but I was seriously starting to flag, when we finally stopped for a quick water break. Ooooh, I thought, half-way – the second half always goes a bit quicker.
That thought was shortlived. Instructor #2 took over, and announced we were going to do the bleep test. BOO.
He’d sneaked out his iPod and a set of speakers in his rucksack and set up little lights to mark out the distance on one of the football pitches. And off we went. It’s fairly easy for the first few levels, then it gets really sodding difficult. Particularly when you’ve done umpteen hill reps, squats and lunges; you’re carrying several kilos more than usual in mud on the ends of your feet; and running on uneven ground. In the dark.
I got to about level 5.6. Pathetic. Particularly because I know I got to 8.7 about eighteen months ago. That was in a gym, with clean trainers. And I hadn’t done a gazillion hill reps first. And it was warm. But still. Three whole levels below where I was and I thought my lungs were going to explode…
Well done to number 19, who almost made it to level 12. He had longer legs than me though. By some considerable margin.
Filed under: British Military Fitness, GRIM Challenge, St Albans, cycling, gym, muffins, running, spinning | Tags: British Military Fitness, GRIM Challenge, hampstead heath, muffins, running, spinning, St Albans
Headed up to Snorbs to meet my little brother for a British Military Fitness class on Saturday morning as planned. Dad came along too – out of genuine interest rather than a desire to embarrass his two sproglets – and luckily the camera was playing up so the episode was not recorded for posterity.
It was a really tough class – much more running sprinting than my normal class and fewer press-ups, sit-ups and burpees which tend to be relentless in Reading. It was a bigger group in general, so I went straight into a group of all reds, meaning there were no blues to keep me company when I was lagging. I struggled to keep up for much of the session, and when it came to trying to carry anther girl the length of a football pitch in a fireman’s lift, I felt like crying.
It strikes me as rather odd that I’ve been running for more than eight years yet this is definitely the weakest link in my BMF classes. And – despite the title of this blog – I do go off running periodically, which is why I take up other things from time to time. The gym, circuits, spinning, cycling, swimming (rarely) and BMF add variety.
Nonetheless, I’ve got the eight-mile GRIM Challenge coming up in two weeks’ time, so I did need to get out on Sunday. Phil and I headed up to Hampstead Heath for a six-miler. My legs were already pretty sore after the über-difficult BMF class the previous day, though I was happy enough for the first couple of miles which is all uphill. That’s progress I can put down to the strength training – a couple of months ago, I struggled to do that without stopping to catch my breath.
But, my newfound power did not last long, and before long I was throwing a bit of a tantrum because I was struggling again. Firstly, I was annoyed because I’d expected to feel much much better having been doing the BMF classes (despite actually not doing a lot of distance running recently); but secondly, I was irrationally pee’d off because Phil didn’t appear to be in the slightest bit uncomfortable and claims to have done hardly any exercise recently. Hmmm – I wonder if he’s been putting in secret hours at the gym.
The reality, of course, is that I just need to rack up a few more miles, and will enter a few more races in the New Year to force myself out to put one foot in front of the other.
In the meantime, I’m going to make some muffins.
Filed under: British Military Fitness, St Albans, running gear | Tags: British Military Fitness, running gear, St Albans
I’m off to my home town, St Albans, tonight – and plan to do a British Military Fitness class with my little brother and his local group tomorrow morning. I’ve bought a new pair of Salomon running tights especially. It’s due to be a bit parky.
Anyway, our parents have just informed us that they intend to come and watch the class. My brother are I are approaching 30 and 32 years of age respectively.
Is it rather sweet that they still take such an interest in our sporting pursuits?
Or just a bit embarrassing?
Filed under: British Military Fitness, Tang Soo Do, spinning | Tags: British Military Fitness, Tang Soo Do
Forgive me bloggers, for I have sinned. It has been 16 days since my last confession post. And in that time, I’ve done only three British Military Fitness classes, one Tang Soo Do class and one spinning class – and eaten a lot of French food during a rather lovely long weekend in Lille. I no longer even dare to stand on the scales.
Tang Soo Do was fun – some kind of Korean martial arts thing; lots of kicking, punching and yelling. If I had the time, I’d pursue it a bit further – but then, if I had the time I’d also learn pole dancing, tennis and how to swim better. So it’s in a queue for the time being.
Instead, I was in the office at 7.15pm this morning and left at 6.40pm – only just about made it to BMF (some of the instructors are very strict about timekeeping). Crap day actually, but good to have a run about in the fresh air at the end of it.
Now, back to my pile of ironing. Rock and roll.
Filed under: 1500m run, British Military Fitness, fitness assessment, running | Tags: 1500m run, British Military Fitness, fitness assessment, running
My fitness assessment results still hadn’t been posted on the British Military Fitness website this morning and – thinking I might have fallen off the bottom of the scale – I emailed them. A nice man called Keith emailed me back immediately, and sent the results back within an hour.
Hi Jo
Here are the results of your fitness test.
1.5km run 8min27sec 17 points
Press-ups 37 reps 54 points
Sit-ups 34 reps 33 points
Burpees 35 reps 76 points
Shuttle run 76 secs 100 points
——–
280 points
Good score Jo, that is definitely a red bib result.
Well done – see you in the park!
That was slightly surprising, I must admit – blue is for novices, red is intermediate and green is advanced. So when I reported for class this evening, it wasn’t without some apprehension. Iasked the instructor if there had been a mistake. He said not. So I donned a red bib – accepted a few congratulations from my friendly BMF classmates and jogged off in line getting gently soaked in the drizzle.
The instructor was a bit mean. After a hard “warm-up”, and some shuttle runs mixed up with various exercises, he split us into groups by colour, put us on three corners of a square in the middle of one of the football pitches – then told us to do 10/15/20 press-ups before moving onto the next corner to do 9/14/19 press-ups, then onto the next corner for 8/13/18, and so on. The idea was to catch the next group, at which point the group was out. We might have only been doing five more press-ups than the blues, but that’s five more EVERY SINGLE TIME. I could barely pick myself up off the floor by the end. Then we had to repeat the exercise with star jumps. Cue wobbly legs, and a funny looking recovery run to the other end of the pitch and back.
After a very short water break, we jogged off to the other side of the park in two lines. On a shout of “contact” we had to run away from the line and hit the deck; “reorg” run back into our lines; “sniper” hit the deck and commando crawl (elbows and knees, bum down); and – for greens only – run away from the lines and do five press-ups on the “enemy” call. Please let me never be a green.
We got to the edge of the park which has 10 trees lining the fence, did five press-ups/sit-ups/squat thrusts, ran to the next tree and repeated the process – until we got to the tenth tree. I really couldn’t move my shoulders now…but there was just time for a mini-game of touch rugby. I was utterly clueless. Didn’t understand the rules, took possession of the ball once and ran in completely the wrong direction, fannied around for a bit on the outskirts of the action, decided to try one more time for the ball, got a bit scared when it headed in my direction…and completely missed it. This is why I don’t play ball games.
The good news is that the pain is starting to pay off. I tackled a six-mile run on Sunday, and found the initial two miles uphill a little easier than I had done previously. I’ll try to keep going with the red team (one blue-bibbed bloke admitted he had passed the test to join the reds but found the red workout too much) and see if I can improve my test results next time. One of the interesting things is that my 1.5km run was actually my worst score – well within the blue parameters – yet I’ve been running for years. I need to learn to run faster than I ever have before.
Filed under: 1500m run, British Military Fitness, fitness assessment | Tags: British Military Fitness, fitness assessment
Shoulder recovered within a couple of days, but Thursday’s sore throat turned into a muzzy head on Friday, a streaming cold on Saturday and a cough on Sunday. The cough lingered and I had to be in London anyway, so I gave British Military Fitness a miss on Monday evening. By today, I’d gone a week without doing any exercise. 
The cough isn’t really getting any better, but I wanted to do the BMF fitness test tonight – which happens on the last Wednesday of every month. Theoretically I should improve over time, so I wanted to find out my base fitness level so I can see some progression. Let’s hope so anyway; I’m not paying £38 a month for evermore if I don’t see any improvement after a few months…
Only about ten people tonight (maybe last night’s snow put a few off) and not everyone wanted to do the test. Dan took those that didn’t want to. Steve took the four test victims candidates, and put us through the following paces:
- A timed 1,500 metre run
- Maximum repetitions over a two-minute period of press-ups
- Maximum repetitions over a two-minute period of sit-ups
- Maximum repetitions over a two-minute period of burpees
- 15x 20 metre shuttle sprints (timed)
Two of the boys (previously spotted wearing super-fit green bibs) took off across the field for the initial run, leaving me and another bloke trying to spot them in the dark. They finished a full two minutes ahead of us, and I was completely last by about seven seconds. I was then partnered with super-fit Ryan, who hails from across the pond, for subsequent exercises. I had to count while he did his press-ups for two minutes (no knees), then we swapped while he counted mine. He got to 80. I did 35 I think. Hmmm. He was jolly nice about it though.
Sit-ups were next (arms across the chest, from shoulder blades on the ground to sitting upright). Not even sure if I got to 30 of those. Mr America did 50.
Then burpees (double-leg squat thrust combined with jump up into the air), which proved to be a “great leveller” as Steve put it – we all did 30-odd of those.
Finally, I spluttered my way through the shuttle runs in 1 minute and 20-something seconds. I was struggling by that point – the temperature had dropped to 3 degrees and my chest was burning.
Nevermind, glad I did it. The scoring system is a complicated affair, but I’m pretty sure I’m firmly in the blue camp. I’m assured that my results will be online for me to look at tomorrow, with an indicator as to how far off the red group I am. Watch this space.
Filed under: British Military Fitness, running | Tags: British Military Fitness, hill sprints, running
Keiran took today’s British Military Fitness class. One of the girls told me at the end of the hour that uphill sprints are his speciality. If I’d known that in advance, I wouldn’t have gone to the class. After a short warm-up, we found a “suitable” hill and started sprinting up and jogging down as a recovery. Within seconds, I was flat on my face for the second time this week, having tripped over a log that was hiding in the shadows. If I’m not careful, I’m going to end up with the same clumsy reputation as I have at work. I’m hoping that – in the dark – no one will have noticed it was me falling over twice in two sessions.
The hill was horrid – about 100m, steep, on uneven ground. Just when you got near the top, it looked like it was flattening out, but actually went up a bit more. I hated every second – but acknowledge it’s got to be good for my regular running. After about 20 mins of those hill sprints, my legs were screaming, but it was time to jog out to a flatter bit for some shuttle runs combined with double sets of floor exercises. Nastiest ones were V-crunches (ab crunches with the hands and legs out straight) and some particularly tough press-up where you had to roll over on one side as you came up with the outer arm outstretched.
I’m not sure I like Keiran’s classes, and was almost relieved when he said he’d only got a handful more to do with us. Until he said he was being posted to Afghanistan, which was pretty sobering.
Filed under: British Military Fitness | Tags: British Military Fitness, gym, mud
I’m feeling rather British, so I’ll start with a weather update. Although windy this morning, it was fairly fine. Though obviously one lady hadn’t demisted her windscreen sufficiently on the way to work, because she pulled out in front of me on a bend, forcing to do the best emergency stop I’ve done since passing my driving test 14 years ago. Luckily there was nobody behind me, otherwise they would have ploughed straight into the back of my pretty little Mini and made me cry.
As the day wore on, the weather got progressively worse and it started raining “stair rods” as my Dad would say. And basically didn’t stop all afternoon. Now, when I signed up for British Military Fitness classes, I had thought about the oncoming winter and worried a little bit about it being cold in December. For some reason, I hadn’t given a thought to the possibility of rain. As I pulled on my BMF jogging bottoms (£6 from Sainsbury’s – give me a seriously baggy arse, but are perfectly adequate for doing sit-ups in a field), I was wondering if I could talk them out of my three-month minimum commitment.
When I got there, everyone else looked like how I felt, and we stood shivering around Steve’s car while he took the register. But soon enough, we were jogging across to one of the football pitches where we did a bit of a warm-up before splitting into pairs. Starting on one of the goal lines, the first person would run to the other end of the pitch and back again, while the second one did sit-ups, press-ups, lunges, or whatever, then we’d swap over. By the time we got to leapfrogging over our partners then scrabbling back through their legs, I’d completely forgotten it was raining and was covered from head to foot in mud.
After a very short break, we were split into two teams and had to relay run around some flashing markers (it’s obviously pitch black by this time) while the rest of the team did burpees. My team won, and got to dish out a penalty to the other team – 10 exploding star jumps – though they got us back on the second round with seven jumping lunges. On each leg. For the third game, we had to maintain the nasty plank position during the course of the relay. I was the penultimate runner, neck and neck with a green on the other team. I sprinted off, running as fast as my little legs could carry me, reached the marker, turned slightly too sharply, slipped and hit the deck smack on my left buttock. Very cool.
One of the lovely things about the class is that everyone’s really friendly, which makes a change from the bitchiness in the changing rooms at the gym. There was a new girl doing her trial session, and although she gasped, “I didn’t think it would be this hard,” to me at one point half-way up the pitch, and I thought her back might give way when I leapfrogged over her, she appeared to enjoy it and made all the right noises about coming back again on Wednesday.
My joggers are in the washing machine along with every other item I was wearing, so I’ll be there too with bells on. Dirt is good.
