A tale of two voices

...in which I talk about running. Again.

So, first things first - I'm still in my target weight range (I was exactly at my target on Monday's weigh-in), and still enjoying being fitter and having more energy. Still sticking to the Slimming World plan, with maybe a few extra syns here and there and extra cheese. Mmmm, cheese...

Sorry, drifted off into a bit of a cheese related reverie there. Where was I?

Oh yes, running. Today is a training day. I have to have a proper training plan and stuff if I'm going to run a marathon next year (which I am), so I run 3 times a week; 2 short runs and one longer one at the weekend, although the 2 short runs are always over 5 miles now and today my short run was 7.85 miles. (Side note: it wasn't that long ago that I'd have considered that an insanely long distance).

I always decide on the route I'm going to run before I start so that I know what I'm aiming for, but I've noticed that while I'm running there are two voices in my head. I think the one comes more or less straight from my legs, and says things like "you don't need to go so far today, you already did extra the other day. You can slow down a bit, too, your pace is well over what it needs to be at this point in your training. You can stop now and walk for a bit, it's fine."

The other one tends to say things like "come on, you can do this. You've run further than this before with no problem so there's no reason to stop. Up the pace a bit, you can smash your target for the marathon at this rate. Don't you dare even think about stopping to walk you little maggot."

I think most people probably have analogues of these voices for most activities; I certainly do. The one is the one that says things like "eat the pizza! Drink the wine! Have a cigarette!" when you're trying to lose weight or give up smoking, versus "you had pizza already this week. You've had enough wine for one day. No, you've given up, don't start again."

(Note - if you've ever given up smoking, you know that it's not something that you just do once, you do it every day. The addiction fades, but the desire is still there; what keeps you an ex-smoker is that you don't give in to it).

I suppose you might call the one of them temptation and the other one willpower. What I've found is that the more often you give in to temptation, the harder it is next time; the more often your willpower wins, the easier it gets to resist temptation because you get rewards from the willpower winning that are usually better than what you'd have got if you gave in.

I'm pretty sure there was a point to this post somewhere but it seems to have slipped my mind...

Mild self-torture

...in which I experience the joys of a foam roller.

In a fit of enthusiasm for this whole running thing I have bought one of these things:

This is called a "foam roller" (other brands are available). They are supposed to facilitate "self myofascial release". You put your weight on them at various points and sort of roll along them, as the name implies. There's an article about how to use one here: A runner's guide to foam rollers.

So, you think, (or at least I thought) "it's just foam, it'll be fine". And then I tried to copy some of the suggestions in that article.

Calf...well, not too bad. Bit painful on the arms if you do it for too long because they're supporting most of the weight of your upper body, but no pain, no gain I guess. Same for the Tibialis Anterior (try saying that after a few beers). Front of the thigh, not too bad...and then the Gluteus (the bottom of the buttocks, if you're not sure).

Imagine being kicked by a donkey. No, harder than that. An Arcturan Mega-donkey (thank you, Douglas Adams). A really angry Arcturan Mega-donkey. Now imagine that the pain from the kick is somehow constant rather than a sharp spike followed by relief. 

Got it? Right. That's a bit like what it feels like to attempt to put your weight on one of your buttocks with one of these things underneath you. Really, I have no idea who invented this idea but it must have been someone that really hates people that exercise. Apparently they're a good way of easing out aches and pains in muscles, although I suspect that actually you just feel better after you get off it because it hurts so much when you're on it.

I'm still within my target range at Slimming World, but we're cutting down a little this week (since we might be living on the credit card if a contract doesn't turn up soon, and I've put a couple of pounds on over the last 2 weeks) so I may well lose more weight. 

I'm up to running around 20 - 30 miles a week (two 5 - 7.5 mile runs in the week and one 10 - 12 mile run on a Sunday, along with 2 - 3 visits to the gym a week), so the preparation for April's marathon is going pretty well at least.

Weekus Horribilis

...in which a rather Bad Thing has occurred

First things first; I'm still within my target weight range, or at least I was on Monday when I got weighed (I now get Slimming World membership for free as long as I'm within 3lbs either side of my target).

Marathon training is continuing, and going pretty well; I'm still doing over the actual amount suggested by the Asics training plan as the runs would be quite short if I stuck to them (5 miles...I'm not sure when 5 miles became a "short" run for me, but it's weird how perception changes).

Anyway, the Bad Thing...this week my PC's hard disk has been more or less completely wiped due to a combination of a Blue Screen of Death and a hard reset performed out of impatience (not by me, I hasten to add - I was out at the Younger Teen's football match). 

When Windows attempted to reboot it ran ChkDsk (a utility for scanning and "fixing" a disk) and the result was that it moved nearly all of my files to a hidden directory, but in the process it's renamed them to nonsense.

I'm currently running some software to attempt to recover what data I can; I have backups of my work for clients, of course, but some other data that should really have been backed up to a different drive has not been for a little while (I'll be setting up an automated backup procedure as soon as this is done...lesson learnt the hard way).

This has led to a sequence of events that can be summed up as buy new hard disk, install Windows 8, realise I have to install Windows 7 first because I only have an upgrade license for Windows 8, Install Windows 7 Home Premium, upgrade that to Windows 7 Pro, then upgrade that immediately to Windows 8, all the while wondering why Microsoft couldn't have just included the ability to check a Windows 7 key in the Windows 8 upgrade install.

That process (and the missing data) has led to a few days of being a bit fed up, which in turn has led to not eating brilliantly, culminating in a bit of a crisp-and-wine-fest last night. Today I am back on the Slimming World train though; Slimming World quiche will be made for dinner, with paprika wedges (the kids can have pizza and chips as they won't eat the quiche).

Anyway, on the plus side I now have a "clean" C:\ drive with very little on it other than the operating system, development software, Open Office and a bit of software that tries to recover deleted files (currently doing a scan on the ex-drive, which is apparently going to take a total of around 75 hours).

Oh yes, and I was in the local paper last night. They haven't put the story online, but it was about the weight I'd lost and the fact that I'm running a marathon next year. So that's quite nice :).