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Archives for August 2015

Workout of the Week: Hammer Intervals

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The key to the hammer intervals is that the fast sections are run at your long interval pace and the hammer intervals are a sprint. So it helps if you have an idea of your paces for different workouts. But the difference is about 90% effort for the fast interval and 100% effort for the hammer interval. The fast interval is faster than tempo, but it’s not an all out sprint. So it is something that you would want to be able to hold for around 1.6km (although here you are only doing it for 300m).

This workout is great for improving your short distance running and mimicking the demands put on your body on race day.

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One month later

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long-run-skeleton-trees

So it’s been just about a month now since I’ve been doing this on my own. You think relationships won’t change, but of course they do. Whether you are ready for them to do that or not. I’ve worried over more things (and more people) than I ever have before. I’ve worried over how I spend my time. I’ve worried over if people are getting enough of what they need. I’ve worried over how to be a coach, a marketer, a strategist and an accountant. And in the end I just kind of winged it to see what would work and what wouldn’t.

I’ve looked with sadness over the instagram feed, which is just me. And I’ve looked with pride where something I’ve done has connected with the community. I tried (badly) to balance marathon training and everything else and I’m counting down the weeks until my running commitment is just a little bit less.

I corrected myself every second sentence where I went to write ‘we’ and I had to change it to ‘I’.

I rediscovered a love of Twitter. I found my camera again too.

I accepted that some relationships couldn’t be saved and some new one’s could be made. I found the weight of responsibility was more of a privilege, than a burden.

I made mistakes and then I corrected course.

My passion is empowerment through movement. If I keep focused on that, everything else will fall into place.

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When you get too stressed to look after your stress

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For the last few months Katie and I have been testing out a few things from Hivita. I’ve talked to you about my epic winter lurgy avoidance here. Which has worked a charm and I’m only a few days shy of spring. 

https://instagram.com/p/5d-MlBjc0i/

And taking a supplement for stress has got me thinking about stress in general. The truth is, me and stress have had a very close personal relationship for the last year. I’ve had big business changes and online trolling and about five million things outside my comfort zone. And it can become easy to feel like you are on high alert all the time. Which is not the way your body is mean to work at all.

Hivita-Stress-100-152x315The thing about stress is there is good stress and bad stress. Without stress of any kind you would probably never get anything done. A little bit of a deadline goes along way. But too much stress and you get nothing done. It becomes counter-productive and you are too overwhelmed to do anything. One of the great things about taking a supplement is that it’s not overwhelming at all. It’s probably the easiest thing you can do for stress. And it does amazing things to help your body do what it needs to do to cope during times of difficulty. And for someone like me who struggles with a lot of anxiety anyway, it doesn’t really have to be a difficult time for me to benefit from the extra support.

And that’s just it, isn’t it? It’s precisely the little things that can make all the difference in managing stress, nervous tension and little bits of anxiety that tend to pop up just when we don’t need them! So what are the benefits of something like Hivita Stress? There’s great benefit in anything that is going to boost your energy levels, elevate your mood, help you get better sleep and generally support your body to be in a place where you can do things that are going to get you away from bad stress. And once you are there, you can take my advice on some other little things that you can do that will help you as well.
1) Make a list and do the easiest things

Now, I know I’m normally hard things first type of person. But when you are struggling pick things that you know you can do and have the satisfaction of ticking off your list and get them out of your brain

2) Sleep

You aren’t achieving anything by staying up worrying over the things outside of your control. Give yourself permission to go to sleep and wake up ready to tackle the next day.

3) Tune out

If you aren’t going to get anything done anyway, you might as well do something that is going to refill your tank – for me that might be watching some movies and doing some crochet or baking and doing something with my hands.

4) Eat

Food is often the first thing that you leave behind as you dive into the stress potato chips and chocolate, but don’t underestimate how much some balanced nutrition is going to balance yourself and take down your stress levels.

5) Make a plan

Break down the things you need to do into bite size chunks and prioritise your list into things that are necessary, things that you need to do when you can and things that you don’t have to do for now.

6) Focus your attention on your biggest stressors

Working out what they are is the important thing. Once you know what they are, you can focus on putting things in place so they don’t stress you out as much. Sometimes that’s doing them first, or delegating them, or asking for help.

7) Don’t be so busy worrying about the next thing, that you don’t recognise your achievements

You know what can make you feel less stressed? Actually stopping to look at how much you are doing. So do that. Don’t get so focused on forging forward that you don’t recognise your own work.

Exclusive Operation Move Reader offer: 30% of all purchases at Hivita before 30/09/2015 plus free shipping for orders over $50. Just enter code OPERATIONMOVE at checkout.

Hivita is available in all good chemists and health food stores and is also available to buy online at http://hivita.com.au/

Workout of the Week: Progression Run

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Any run where the faster bits are shorter has to be good, right?

This run will take you 30:00, but if you are a newer runner you might like to start with less repetitions – so you could do 3 reps for a 15:00 run. It will target speed and endurance and you should aim for the easy part to be at a conversational pace, the steady part to be comfortable but not a recovery jog, the fast part to be hard but still able to speak in short sentences and the sprint to be as fast as you can for the interval.

Who’s ready?

Progression Run

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Isn’t it beautiful?

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I’ve had a blog in one form for six years and I’ve only had writers block once or twice. Doesn’t really happen that often. Once it happened because I took a break and it was hard to get back into the swing of things. Once or twice it was because I was leaving something unsaid and so I couldn’t say anything at all. And here we are again. In the land of writers block and I couldn’t quite figure out why.

For the last two weeks I’ve been trying to figure it out. I sit down to write and there’s nothing there. It’s just blank. When you start something as a partner, it’s hard to continue as a solo act I guess.

I’m a great coach but I’m a pretty crap marketer. Most businesses I’ve been a part of I’ve ensured that there was someone else doing the advertising/marketing/finance/accounting stuff because it’s not a strong suit. At all. So I think a big part of it is spending so much time outside my comfort zone learning all the things I don’t know (or trying to) that there’s not much creativity left over for writing. Of course the irony is, if I made space in my brain for it, well creativity feeds into everything you do.

The perils of being a geeky running coach is that I can allow the numbers to feed into my running a bit too much. And that is very true with marathon training. I’m very aware of where my pace should be, how easy something should feel or how hard. And it can cause you to lose the love for it a bit. Too much science, not enough art.

I love hill sprints. And not just in a ‘I love them when they are done’ kind of way. I actually love them. They aren’t paced so the aim is to just run hard for the whole time and not stop and then you get a nice downhill recovery before you go again. They are such a great test of your body and it leaves little room for too much thinking. And today it was enough that I could let a lot of my stress and anxiety get lost in the fog and I could just run. And I let the creative part back in a bit too.

spider-web
And isn’t it beautiful?

After the last few weeks I really needed to find some magic, something to inspire enough wonder to take me outside of myself. And there it was, waiting for me.

Go outside. Something amazing always happens.