Early Morning Walks September 25, 2006
For the past week, I’ve been taking my daughter G (4.5 years old) out for a walk first thing in the morning. She wakes up early (around 5:00 to 5:30 am!), and won’t go back to sleep. So I usually end up getting her up and changed, then playing with her until everyone else gets up (around 6:00 on weekdays, 6:30 or 7:00 on weekends).
For the past week, I’ve be putting G in a pram and going out for a walk. I figure I’m up early anyway, I may as well be getting some benefit out of it. She loves the walks, too.
Oh, and in case you think it’s weird that a 4.5-year-old needs supervision in the mornings and rides in a pram - G has Down syndrome. She can walk fine, but not for long distances and certainly not at a speed where I’m getting good exercise. She really enjoys riding in the pram and waving at other early-morning walkers and joggers.
Here are some recent photos:
When you live in a small coastal town with views like that, why wouldn’t you be up for sunrise?!
Running With A Friend April 9, 2006
Yesterday at H’s first birthday party, I got talking to a mate (we’ll call him ‘A’) who lives just down the street from me. He has been talking about losing weight and getting fitter for a while now, and has been through a few fads trying to find something that works.
For example, at the start of summer he bought a surf ski with good intentions of taking it paddling every morning. I think he’d been watching the Iron Man races on TV! He stopped after about 3 or 4 weeks, mainly because of the hassle of loading it onto his car, driving to the river, and cleaning it off when he came home. A session on the ski takes 1 to 1.5 hours, and he found that wasn’t sustainable every day of the week.
So he asked me if I’d mind if he tagged along on my jog the next morning. “No problem,” I said, “but you’ve got to be waiting out the front at 5:45 am!” I knew he wanted to come, but I honestly didn’t really expect him to be there. Night-guy is very good at making commitments that morning-guy can’t keep, especially after a few beers!
A is about the same height as me, but he’s roughly 10 kg (22 lbs) heavier than I am. Last December, I was nearly 5 kg (11 lbs) heavier than him, so he knows that whatever I’m doing is working. I think he wanted to pick my brains as much as join me for exercise!
To my surprise, on Sunday morning when I walked out the front door, he was waiting in the driveway!
A isn’t the fittest of people, but that wasn’t a big problem. We decided to just do 60 second run/60 second walk intervals and see how he went. He was able to maintain that pace for much of the 3 km course, occasionally needing to go a bit longer walking or to stop running a bit earlier. Mostly it was the hills that were getting him.
I found it fairly easy to jog beside him, and actually enjoyed the shorter run/walk intervals. I was rarely out of breath, and was able to chat most of the way around. His contributions to the conversation were mostly monosyllabic :-).
The experience was almost like going back and running with the ‘me’ of a few months ago. I was around the same weight and level of fitness then as he is now, and would have barely been able to go at the same 60 second walk/60 second run rate. It really made me aware of how far I’ve come in such a short time, and I think it was motivating for him to see where he’d be in a couple of months if he keeps it up.
After we’d finished, A was weary but feeling pretty pleased with himself. He did better than I thought he would, and he’s keen to join me again on Tuesday morning.
When I got home, I checked the stats on my heart monitor. Normally, I’d take about 28 minutes to do my run (including walking for a bit both before and after) and I’d burn around 470 calories. I’d spend about 7 minutes in my target heart rate zone for weight loss - the heart monitor usually told me 30% of my calories were “fat burning”.
This morning’s jog took about 33 minutes, but 19 of those minutes were within my weight loss target heart rate zone. Although the exercise was a fair bit easier, we took longer to cover the course, so I still burned around 420 calories. But the most interesting bit was that the heart monitor told me 45% of those calories were “fat burning”. So I actually burned off more fat during this easier jog than I do when I run faster!
My friend enjoyed the jog and is planning to join me every second day until he builds up his fitness some more. He doesn’t want to push himself too hard and says he needs a day’s break after each run to recuperate, but I think he also feels like he’s holding me back. But according to the heart monitor he’s actually helping me to burn more fat!
Running with A on alternate days will work out well. I still want to do the harder runs, as they build my fitness more than easy runs will. It just means that now I’ll be doing a “fitness” run every second day, and a “fat burning” run on the days in between. I think that will work out really well. If nothing else, knowing that A is waiting for me out in the chilly darkness will stop me from turning off the alarm and going back to sleep!
Technorati Tags: running, jogging, walking, exercise, health, fitness, endurance
Matt Starts Running April 6, 2006
Matt over at PhysicsDiet.com has recently started running for exercise. He’s posted a bit of info about how he’s going so far - Running - Getting Started.
Matt is using a similar approach to how I started - alternate periods of running and walking, going for about 30 minutes at a time. He started about a week ago with run 30 seconds/walk 60 seconds (or sometimes a little longer), and has already built it up to run 45 seconds/walk 60 seconds.
It’s a little concerning to read about Matt’s trouble with his Achilles Tendon, although it sounds like it’s responding to rest/ice/elevation and the soreness is reducing with each run. Hopefully it’s just a matter of strengthening it up over time.
Although I can now run all the way around my 3 km course, I find that it’s pretty heavy going and pushes me well out of my aerobic heartbeat range. I now run 4 minutes/walk 1 minute most days, and run the complete course only once per week to see how well I’m improving.
The interval training method does seem to increase my fitness faster than just running to exhaustion, and it only adds about 1 minute or so to my total time for the course. Those little walking rests allow my body to recover a bit, and I make up most of the walking time by being able to run faster afterwards. Besides, it’s easier than running to exhaustion :-).
It’ll be interesting to follow Matt’s progress and see how he improves in the coming weeks.
Using A Heart Rate Monitor January 9, 2006
Another good walk this morning with G.
According to the heart rate monitor, I burned 441 calories this time. The monitor is really good for letting you know when you need to put in a bit more effort to keep your heart rate up, rather than just strolling along and taking it easy. I can feel it in my muscles afterwards - I’m definitely walking harder and making better use of my exercise time. I figure, if you’re putting in the time anyway, you may as well get the most out of it you can!
Never Trust 4-Year-Olds January 8, 2006
I finally got back into the morning walking routine. I took G with me this morning, and decided to walk a little further than usual (about 45 minutes instead of 30). Partly it was because I had just gotten a new heart rate monitor and wanted to see how it worked, and partly it was to make up for all the missed exercise sessions this week.
About 3/4 of the way around my chosen walking route, I noticed that G was missing a shoe. Damn, she must have kicked it off somewhere along the walk! Nothing for it but to back-track (my route is a loop, so I was coming home via different streets to where the shoe was dropped).
So, I backtracked. I walked and walked, and there was no sign of the shoe. I was beginning to think it must have been picked up by someone, or that maybe I’d missed it again. I got all the way back home and found it in front of my neighbour’s house! Oh well, at least I had a good long walk!
According to the heart monitor, I burned 562 calories with 55% of that being classified as fat-burning. That means I burned around 309 calories of fat. Not bad!
Now, About That Diet… January 4, 2006
I know that I said a few days ago that I wasn’t going to worry about trying to change my diet at this stage, preferring instead to concentrate on integrating exercise into my daily routine. But I’ve found that I’m now looking at food a little differently, and choosing healthier options when eating out, skipping junk food snacks at home, and eating a little less at each meal.
It feels like overeating or eating rubbish is working against all the effort I’m putting into exercising, and so it’s just less appealing to me lately.
When I jogged this morning, I made it further up the first hill than I ever have before. My fitness is definitely improving. I continued my walk up the hill towards the lookout far above our town, and I made it further than I ever have before in the same amount of time. This is great!
Sweat It December 24, 2005
In order to get benefit from exercise, you really need to get your heart rate up and sweat. You’re not out for a stroll to the shops, you’re burning calories!
So I’ve started jogging a bit during my walks. I find if I walk for a few minutes to warm up, and then jog for a minute or two, it really gets my heart rate up. Then I walk for a bit to get my breath back, then jog for a bit, then walk again, and so on.
The only problem I’ve had with jogging is that my iPod is one of the big ones, and it’s a bit heavy and bounces around in my pocket. I’m worried I’m going to drop it. So I’ve made a deal with myself that I’ll buy one of the tiny iPod Shuffles once I get my weight under 100 kg. They’re not very expensive, and I think that’s a milestone worth celebrating, don’t you?
A Man With A Pram December 15, 2005
G woke up early this morning, so I dressed her and took her out walking with me in a pram. She really enjoyed it, especially when I ran on a few flat bits of the footpath (another benefit of walking before 6:00am is that nobody can see you being silly!).
Pushing a pram seems to work different muscles - I noticed my legs were sore in different places today, and my arms were a bit sore too. I guess that’s a good thing!
I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t get as much exercise when pushing a pram as I do when walking briskly, but I was still pretty tired by the end of the walk. My town is quite hilly, so the pram gives some good resistance training!
iPod - My Smallest Piece of Exercise Equipment December 13, 2005
I walked again this morning, and actually enjoyed it.
Finding Time
Getting up at 5:30am seems to solve my Time- and Guilt-based aversions to exercise. I’ve found the extra half-hour in my day by simply getting up earlier, and so far it doesn’t seem to require me going to bed earlier at night. And I don’t feel guilty about leaving my wife at home to get the kids ready without help, since they’re all still in bed at that time (including her!).
Dealing With Boredom
But the big killer for me in the past has been Boredom. There just isn’t enough interest in plain old walking to keep me motivated day after day, week after week. Sure, you can vary your route on different days, but it’s still pretty uninteresting.
I’ve found a solution that’s working for me, though, and it might also work for you.
Audio Books
I have a half-hour drive to work every day, which is normally pretty much dead time. There’s not a lot you can do in a car to use that time productively, so you end up just listening to mindless radio. Then a couple of years ago I discovered the audio book section in my local library, and tried listening to books on the way to work. It turns out to be a great use of that time! I was getting through a full book every week or two.
Podcasts
About a year ago I started downloading and listening to podcasts, which were even better as they were directly related to my own interests - most of the books on tape were targeted to the older residents of our town, and I’d already been through most of the ones that really interested me.
So, I’m taking my iPod out with me in the mornings and listening to podcasts that I’m really interested in. Walking is no longer boring - it’s like I’m getting up half an hour early to listen to podcasts while my body goes for a walk.
Banish Laziness Too!
As an unexpected side effect, listening to podcasts also helps me with my Laziness problem. Each episode of a podcast is usually 10 minutes to an hour long, so it’s pretty rare that I finish an episode just as I get home (whether driving or walking). Each morning, I’m keen to get up and get out walking because I’m interested to hear the rest of the episode. Today I even kept walking for about 10 minutes longer because I wanted to keep listening.
Finding Podcasts
To find podcasts, just install Apple’s iTunes (available for Windows or Mac) and click on the Podcasts tab. You can learn more about using iTunes for listening to podcasts at the Apple web site. Or if you don’t want to use iTunes, read about podcasting at Wikipedia, download an alternative podcatching client, and search for podcasts at Podcast Alley.
Other Sources of Audio
If you can’t find any podcasts you’re interested in, or you don’t have broadband and so can’t download them, try audio books. Most libraries have them tucked away somewhere, and it really isn’t hard to rip the CDs into your iPod so you can listen to them more easily. You can purchase audio books online via the iTunes Music Store or somewhere like Audible.com. You could also purchase used audio books on CD from eBay, and then sell them again after you’ve listened to them.
The First Day December 12, 2005
Today, I got up at 5:30am and went for a brisk half-hour walk. It actually wasn’t too bad.
Getting up at 5:30am instead of my usual 6:00-6:30 start actually wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. It’s only really half an hour less sleep, and doing some exercise seems to wake you up faster and keep you more alert during the day.
The main benefit of an early start for me, though, is that the children normally don’t wake up until 6:00am. So nobody misses me for that half hour, and I can help getting kids dressed, making breakfasts, etc when I get back.
If G does wake up early, I guess I’ll get her dressed and bundle her into a pram and take her with me.