My Life My Words

Back Problems

For no apparent reason I woke up with chronic back pain again on Sunday. What started out as irritable stiffness soon turned in to all out back spasms by Wednesday morning.

This isn’t the first time I have had this and as some of you may well know the first thing that people like to point the finger at is the type of exercise I do.

This time it was nothing more than sleeping in a funny position.

I went to see a movement specialist on Tuesday who was horrified at my lack of hip mobility and said that he is sure that 98% of my back issues come from this problem. So I’m having my first session with him today.

I also went to see a Chiropractor yesterday who basically couldn’t do anything for me - so he referred me a specialist who practices Trigger Point Injection therapy.  Basically this involves injecting the site of the muscle in spasm with injections of saline and Novocaine.

I had approximately 50-60 injections into my lower back and butt. I was going to count but I gave up after the second injection. This process basically induces a relaxation of the muscle which feels like when you get a twitchy eye (but in your bum and legs). 

The relief was almost immediate and it felt like I was melting into the table I was laying on. I have woken up with more soreness and this is most likely due to bruising around the spine from the muscle contractions during the spasm - almost like the feeling you get after a heavy cramp. Sometimes it takes a few days to get the full feeling back.

Tonight I am seeing the movement specialist again tonight followed by the Chiropractor again on Friday along with more Chiropractor and Injections next Wednesday.

My main goal of this is to become more flexible in my hips and to relieve the pressure that this tightness puts on my back. The other things I need to look into are Yoga (I did it once before and quite enjoyed it) and stretching both in the morning and in the evening. I now need to learn what type of stretches I need to do, how long for and then I can start thinking about working out again.     

Thinking about programming

I have been a member of Crossfit 5th Avenue in NYC since Thursday and I have been twice since then. After Thursday’s session I found it very difficult to move for 3 days - I guess that’s what happens after 4 months away from Crossfit.

I have been creeping the daily workouts that are posted on their blog each morning and I have come to the conclusion that whoever is doing the programming is a sadist! 

Today’s WOD:

• 100 Burpees - 3 Minute Rest
• 80 Kettlebell Swings @ 53lbs (24kg)
• 60 Box Jumps (24”)
• 40 Ball Slams (40lbs)
• 20 Pistols

Maybe it’s my 4 months off talking but suddenly I find myself going from ‘As Prescribed’ workouts to scaling everything. I’m struggling to put more then 5 Pull ups together and my hands have obviously turned into Princess Palms in my time off, because they hurt constantly. I need to build up some hard skin again soon!!

(from CF5thAve’s website)

Lat night we did a great little AMRAP

• 5 Handstand Pushups (I scaled to inverted box pushups)
• 7 Power Cleans @ 145lbs (I scaled to 115lbs)
• 12 Toes to Bar (I didn’t scale these but I ripped my hands to shreds)

Before that we did 8X3 Box squats (on the minute every minute per set) and a 10,10,8,6 Good Mornings.

How my Hamstrings aren’t tight I don’t know but I’m feeling really good today. (scale is down from 219lbs - 209lbs since last Wednesday) and my eating has been spot on. I even managed to make my Paleo Porridge this morning because my whey powder came in.

• Mash a banana
• 15g non salted Cashews (chopped)
• 14g of non salted Almonds (chopped)
• a large spoon of flax seed
• 1 or 2 scoops of chocolate protein powder to taste

Its pretty amazing.

Tonight I run - 6 miles around Central Park

A 6 Mile Run & Falling For Central Park

So I managed to get my butt of my bed and go for my 6 Mile run that I had been dreading all day. It wasn’t the best run or the most enjoyable, in-fact I felt a niggle in my hip which was causing my right foot to rotate inwards when I was lifting it during my strides. Meaning that every few steps it was grazing my left ankle.

Not enjoyable - But its done now - and now I can relax

Since I’m going back home to the UK for the holidays I spent a lot of time thinking about my move to New York and what it has meant to me so far. Yes, I miss my family, friends & Girlfriend but this move has been so good for me. I have also fallen in love with the park over the past 2 months. 

(SOURCE)

I managed to take a walk around the Lower Loop last weekend during a fine, clear day and got some amazing shots of live within the Park. 

This photo almost looks like something out of Narnia (without the snow) 

I still feel so lucky that I get to call this place home.

You know that feeling…

When you don’t want to run the 6 miles that sit on your marathon training plan for tonight…

Yeah, that!

Well I totally messed that up

My marathon training (Day 3) called for 5 Mile ‘Bursts’ which I had never heard of unlike Fartlek Intervals which I used to do with my running club back home.

I decided to dive deep into the realms of Garmin and see if I could set the intervals up on my watch and HAZAA you can! Or you can if you don’t mess it up, like I did. 

So the basis is you go in, pick what type of training session you want and it works it all out and like magic it syncs to your watch and that beeps shouts and vibrates at you as and when you need to change pace.

(Can you see the problem?)

So instead of picking a pace that I wanted to work to I chose speed!! and I got it so, so wrong. All was well until my first recovery kicked in, it worked out that I should be running a 15:00 - 12:00 minute mile. I wanted it to be between 9:00 - 10:00.

So every 10 seconds my watch was vibrating and beeping at me and the whole screen lit up with SLOW DOWN… but I don’t want to slow down!

The run was good and even with the Garmin mistake. Central park was alive with runners but I think I need to figure this one out in time for the repeat session next week. I think I need sessions like this to keep my running mixed up and hopefully improve my overall pace. I just need to work the thing out.

Sometimes I find it hard to motivate myself

Sometimes I come home from work and all I want to do is crawl in to bed and get warm and cosy. It’s easy to do, I’m sure you have often thought the same thing. This time last year I was living alone and quite often I would do just that. No one would know, it would be just this once.

Well, once turns in to twice.

Twice has the habit of turning in to thrice.

And so the rock starts to roll down hill and you find yourself after a few weeks or months pilling on the pounds and creeping to where you were at your start point. 

Tonight would have been one of those nights, It would have been easy to come home climb into my warm bed and close out the sleet, wind and snow falling outside.

Luckily I had made my mind up yesterday to follow the same Marathon training plan that Chris had found on Mens Running UK Magazine.

(16 weeks of pure hell right there!!)

The great thing about this is that Chris is highly motivated and as per Paragraph 6, subsection C, article ii of the roommate agreement he has to make sure I stick with it too. 

We got home at 5:30 and bundled up, well one of us did. the other insisted on wearing shorts!

(Feels like -2!!)

The run was great, we jogged down 56th Street to the water and there we set off. My run was no where near as fast as his but I was pretty pleased considering how horrible the wind felt as I was running north. 

As I hit the turn at 2 miles the wind was behind me and I immediately felt warmer and shed the gloves. The hat came off soon after.

I’m so glad that I have kept up with getting back into this. I’m starting to feel better already, both physically and mentally - It’s official, my next Marathon will be in DC come March 16th.

What a difference a week makes

I am sitting here on the worlds ugliest couch watching Family Guy, after a great meal*, feeling pretty good about myself. 

A week ago I wrote a fairly honest post about how I was feeling about my current fitness level. How I wanted things to change for the better and get back to where I was last October. 

I decided to go out for another lap around Central Park to see how things would compare after 1 week of conscious eating and working out again and I think the results speak for them self. 

                       Week 1                                                 Week 2

I managed to take 5 minutes off of my 10k time in 1 week. 

The run felt fantastic this evening. After the first mile and a half I had warmed up enough to just seem to get in to a stride. Last week it seemed a real effort to do the run without stopping. Tonight I felt like I was able to attack the up hill sections and use the down hill sections to increase my stride length and glide along as I recovered. 

Its moments like this that I remember how much I used to enjoy running and I’m looking forward to fitting in a run during my day off on Thursday (Thank you America).

I’m going to start weighing in on Wednesdays from now on. Last week (Monday) I was 97.3kg (214 lb.) but was far to upset with myself to post that in last weeks post. We shall see what Wednesday brings. 

On another note I am incredibly humbled by the multiple messages of support I received last week and I noticed that many of the people I follow also decided to kick off a restart of their own and I’m really excited to see how things go for all of you.

*It actually tasted really good

Things to improve on

Last night I manged to go out for my second run this week which if you look over my past few months of activity is a pretty big deal. I have decided to use these 2 runs as my marker, my - It can only get better from here - if you will.

Firstly can I just say how much Manhattan fucks with your Garmin! to get to Central Park I have to walk 2 blocks. Plenty of time you would think for your Garmin or any other GPS device to lock on to a signal, right! WRONG!!!

I was running with Chris, we both have Garmin watches. He has the more slimline 410

I have the Triathlon (obviously at some stage I had an idea that I wanted to run an IronMan…. Silly Rob) Version, the 310xt

Now you would think that other then the screen size and the waterproof housing this would be the exact same GPS components in each version….. Hahaha, NOPE!

As we were running my watch said that I was 0.1 mile behind Chris after 1 mile. Now that doesn’t seem like a lot but lets say we were training for a marathon and we went out and did an 18 mile run, separately one of us would have run 1.8 miles less then the other! Does that worry anyone else?

As the run went on Chris and I were seeing what happened with the distance each of our watches were reporting and I have to say at the end of the 3.1 miles mine had caught up

The reports…

Now considering we ran together and started and stopped our watches at the same time (mine said it had good signal at the start) It looks as though mine thought I was starting in the middle of the park rather than the loop.

Is this a fault or do you think this is the buildings causing GPS issues?

either way it’s annoying as hell when you are trying to keep track of your progress.

Any way back to my point of laying down my marker times to be improved on over the next few months.

5k - 27:48

10K - 1:00:52

Do any of you get strange results from time to time from your GPS devices? be it a phone or a watch I would like to know.

This is a post I have never wanted to write

I have been avoiding writing this post for a long time, maybe 5-6 months as I felt it would symbolise defeat and no one likes to admit they have failed.

This might get long so bare with me. 

I am falling back into a lifestyle that I vowed never to return. My pre Tumblr days which involved lots of sitting and not much exercise. Since I moved to New York I have only been out for 2 runs. The first run was out with my roommate and after the first 2 mile I had to stop every mile just to catch my breath and stretch. 

I feel unfit, fat and useless and I have been hiding in baggy clothes. 

I went out for drinks on Saturday night, to celebrate Jenn moving to New York 3 years ago and one of her friends birthdays. As we were going to a fancy rooftop bar I was rightly told to get dressed up so I pulled out a pair of Jeans that I haven’t worn in about 8 months and one of my work shirts. 

Lets just say I felt out of place all night and was constantly thinking that I looked awful. Not only that but I felt awful too. 

So yesterday I hatched a plan to get back to where I was last November when I was at my fittest and most importantly, my healthiest. 

So lets get this over with, shall we?

The Nitty Gritty 

This is me now, as of 7:30 EST this evening. 

I think, if you have been following me for a while, you can agree I am a long way from where I was.

So where do I go from here?

I need to find a CrossFit gym here in New York, I know there are lots to choose from but as I haven’t been paid for a full month I’m not sure how much I will have left over to drop $200 a month (plus Tax). In the mean time I will need to make do with what I have available to me. 

1. Central Park. This most famous piece of public space is right on my door step, so there is no excuse not to get into a running plan and stick with it. 
2. Work Gym. Not a gym as such more like a 12’x12’ room with a treadmill and some dumbbells. This will give me some basic equipment to write some very basic CrossFit exercises. 

Tonight I started. I got home from work at just after 6pm and put on my new running shoes that I bought at the NYC Marathon expo and went for it. 

1 Loop of Central Park

I had one goal….

Not to stop. 

I didn’t stop (apart from the stop lights as I made my way to the park)

So I think I can class this as a small victory, even if it was one of my slowest runs in a year. 

Tonight Stef is cooking a wonderful home cooked meal for me, as she still cannot move back in to her apartment due to storm damage.

Tomorrow, I have plans to do a makeshift CrossFit workout in the work gym. 

This is 45pounds, 2.0

It needs to happen again.