Giving Blood and Training

I have not given blood for about 10 years and I don't know how so much time has passed. In spite of moments of guilt and self-flagellation I never organised myself and, like so many of my good intentions, things never got done. This year is going to be different though. This year one of my resolutions is to take good intentions seriously and either make a plan to do them or a conscious decision to do nothing. I will try not to carry around a cloud of vague wishes.

So on Monday I gave blood. However I did not ask or even think about whether it would affect my training. I knew I would have to take things easy for a little bit and as Tuesday was always going to be a rest day I thought this would be enough. Yesterday I went to the gym as normal and oh my, was it hard! I felt I was being flogged and afterwards I just felt very, very weary.

In my time honoured tradition of doing research after the event I have now found some information. From the blog Fitness & Health with Dr Gabe Mirkin I found that:

Following a donation of one pint, blood volume is reduced by around ten percent and returns to normal in 48 hours. So, for two days after donating, you should drink lots of fluids and probably exercise at a reduced intensity or not at all. Donating blood markedly reduces competitive performance for three to four weeks as it takes that long for blood haemoglobin levels to return to normal.

Also there was a thread on the Cycling Weekly message board which contained this information form their fitness consultant Hannah Reynolds

"We asked the Blood Donor agency for their answer for that particular feature. They recommended not training for the day you gave blood and to stick to very light training for another week. It will take several weeks to re-build your blood levels. While it won't affect your training too much in the off-season, as long as you follow guidelines and take care of your diet, it is best avoided during race season."

So it looks like I will taking it easy for the next few days.

Sad Songs

My daughter wanted to listen to some music on her run and asked to borrow my Ipod. Scanning through the contents she soon came to the conclusion that I had nothing suitable for running. She pointed out, quite accurately, almost all my music is miserable, I listen to very little that is bouncy and virtually nothing that has the driving beat found on most tracks recommended for running

I thought about this when reading I run because I like food's list of favourite running songs and realised I do not have a single song I would recommend as good for running. At the same time, when running, I enjoy almost everything on my Ipod.

It is a real pleasure to put it on shuffle so that you never know what will be next. Songs can sometimes seem fresher when heard against something unrelated. Seeing how long it takes to recognise a new track can be diverting, as is the game of trying to make associations between each piece of music. It does not matter if the music is fast or slow as it's function is to take attention away from the state of your legs and this is how I use it. I take an Ipod on long runs to make them just a little bit easier.

The effectiveness of music in increasing endurance and lessening the perception of pain has recently been tested (an account can be found ,here). It involved 80 people plunging their hand into icy water for as long as they could up to a limit of five minutes (for some reasons ethics committees seem to baulk at the risk of inflicting real physical damage). They did this first looking at a blank wall, then a piece of art, and then some music of their choice. The visual stimulation of art did not affect the length of time people kept their hand in the water (although they said it helped them distract themselves from the pain). However music had a significant effect and pain could be endured longer and felt less.

This is directly applicable to running. Music can help, all you have to do is choose things you like, whatever that may be - even miserable stuff.

How Far?

Numbers can be very harsh. There is no room for negotiation or special pleading. It is what it is.

Traditionally I have never worried too much about mileage and mainly measured by time and heart rate and have a rough idea of the length of most of my routes. That is not good enough if I want to increase my E number as I have to know my mileage on my longer runs. In the absence of anything else, the Gmap Pedometer is really good but I use it after a run, to measure where I have been. I like to set out with only a vague plan of where I am going, with the option of making changes – either shortening or extending, trying somewhere new or even adding a hill (I can imagine all the serious athletes with their strict schedules shaking their heads with pity at someone who always builds in latitude).

This week’s longer run was a good example: all I knew was that I wanted to run about 11 miles so that I could start to raise my E Number above 10 but I did not know whether I was going to do an out and back along the canal or loop back over a ridge. As I felt quite strong when I reached Berkhamsted I thought a bit of hill work would be OK and so went up to the Common and enjoyed a section running through the trees. All in all it was a good day. Except …

Except that when I measured the distance it was 10.96 miles. Only 0.04 short of 11 but by the rules it still counts as a 10 mile run. Damn, if I had known I could have easily run the extra couple of hundred yards.

A speed/distance device would have sorted me out and I am thinking about buying one. The trouble is I cannot decide what I want: footpod or GPS, Garmin, Polar, Suunto or Timex. It is all so damn confusing. In the grand scheme of things it probably does not matter - choose one, for whatever reason, and go with it. They all have different strengths and weaknesses but will all do a job. However I can be paralysed by choice and spend ages wallying around thinking: Do I need more than the cheapest option i.e. the Garmin 50? I like the Timex as a sports watch and would also wear it all day. The Suunto display is really neat and it looks good but I think Polar have heart rate information really well sorted. There is no functional reason to prefer the more expensive Garmin 405 over the 305 but the 305 does look a bit of a lump. Etc, etc, etc.

So there you have it – the numbers might be clear and absolute but how you arrive at those numbers is far from straightforward.

The HK Book of Tips No 1: Look On The Bright Side

PositiI have a shelf full of running books – I don’t know why. All the basic information I need could be contained in one small volume. Nevertheless I enjoy reading them and each of has its own insights. They are a bit like cookbooks where some are a history of the food and culture of a region, whilst others are just lists of recipes but whatever the type of cookbook you tend to make only a few recipes from each book.

Cooking and running are both applied skills, so what you are ultimately looking for are instructions and practical tips you think you can apply. For example a tip that says the motivation for getting out on a cold winters night is the thought that competitors will be out there training, is meaningless for me as I am not good enough to think of racing other people. It stays on the page. However a simple statement saying it is important to train consistently and have goals is appropriate. It gives me a framework to examine what I do and think more clearly about it. (Both those tips were in a surprising good guide to getting fit for running in last Saturday’s Guardian, which also available online).

Sometime I think that what I need is a book of tips, small nuggets of advice that can be tried out and adopted if they work or tossed aside if they don’t - the equivalent of a book of aphorisms.

Perhaps I should collect some for this blog and make it a weekly feature. In which case, I will start with one from Andy Vernon (Runners World, November 2008, p67) who said that he had been advised, by sports psychologist Dave Alred, to keep a daily dairy in which to write three good things about his training and racing. At the end of the week he had to ask himself how he thought he had become a better runner in the past seven days. This made him more aware of his training, why he was doing it, and different types of improvement.

I think I could adapt this. It would not be daily but I could think of something good about each run and note it in my training dairy. I don’t think I could stretch to three good things but even on a bad day there must be at least be something. Also I like the idea of trying to recap the week and think of improvements. I never ask myself how I have improved (probably because I never think I have) but if I force myself to look I am sure I will be able find something. Surely there will be something – even if it is only a little thing. Finding it will help me be more positive (perhaps).

New Year Resolutions

The beginning of the year and time to think of hopes and objectives.

On Sunday I sat down with my notebook and thought of all of the things I ought to be doing in 2009. The list contained jobs that had been hanging around (in some cases for years), areas of personal development, resolutions, and objectives. At the end I couldn’t decide whether I was impressed or depressed at reaching the bottom of the second page. The only definite conclusion was that there was plenty of room for improvement.

So here are my six running resolutions:

1) First and most important is that I will keep running. This may sound a daft thing to say but I think it is important to examine the reason for spending all this time and energy and consciously decide whether it is worth it or not. In this case the answer is fairly obvious as I have only to compare the satisfaction I find on runs with the lassitude that descends when I stop. As long as running makes me feel more alive and alert I will continue.

2) Improve my annual E Number, as explained in this post. I aim to raise it from 10 to at least 12. This resolution has an important consequence for my record keeping as I will have to be more accurate about my mileage as up till now I have only really bothered about time and heart rate. It could be that I will have to succumb to wearing one of those GPS thingies after all, either that or be a bit more assiduous with Gmaps.

3) Lose a stone in weight. I am probably making the same resolution three quarters of the population but I have a practical reason: excess weight makes running long distances much harder. The Jeff Galloway Marathon book contains a chart of how much older your legs feel if you are 10-20lbs overweight – think 5- 10 years. Now these figures can only be conjecture but I had never thought of weight in that way before. I am old enough as it is so those extra years make me decrepit.

4) Run at least one marathon and three half-marathons and a 10k. As yet I have not decided which races or even whether I should try for a spring marathon or leave it till autumn. I have never started a spring marathon and so part of me thinks this is something I should do but it is balanced by the fact that I prefer to run in clement weather and September is a better month for long runs than March. Whatever, it is a decision I need to make quickly. For the half marathons I notice a number of fine bloggers are doing Reading, so that might be a possibility.

5) Be more upright. I do not think there is a correct style for running. Within certain parameters I believe we all have our own biomechanics and evolve a style to accommodate our particular imbalances. However there are some basic principles, among which is that the upper body should be relaxed and upright. You should not bend from the waist, which is what I tend to do on longer runs. This year I will make a conscious effort to work on this particular element of my style.

6) Write 104 blog posts. I was very impressed that last year I wrote precisely that number i.e. two a week. I want to see if I can maintain that average.

Not Running on Ice

The sun is out, the sky is blue, the air is clear but I am not out running. I am not ill or injured, there is no other reason than the fact that it is bloody cold, or more the point very icy.
I took a walk along the canal to test the conditions and found it more dangerous than I imagined. The picture in this post is taken from a bridge whose footpath is covered with a smooth sheet of ice. When walking off it I could not keep my footing at all and so just slid down the slope. On the path you can see there are patches of pure ice. Trying to run would make me very anxious, especially as my left-hand has still not fully recovered from being smashed in a fall in September.
Now some people say that with good technique you will keep your balance and running on ice is a good test and there is a video from the Pose site of Dr Romanov running on ice but he is running on a smooth flat surface. Running on an icy uneven or sloping surface is much more tricky and I see no virtue in trying to test the limits of my technique.
You can call me a wimp or a fair-weather runner, I don’t mind - because it is true. On the scale between intrepid and soft I hover just above the comfort zone. So on days like this I am happy with a slow walk.