Training plan - Basic stage II.

Okay, a few weeks ago I made myself a promise, that I translate all my posts from Hungarian and I do not post a new one until I'm done. So I lied to myself. But obviously I have to hurry up, 'cos I'm about to finish the 8th week of trainings.

Here is a post from 7th February, 2013: 

As a great progress, by the end of the 5th week I won the battle for 40 minutes non-stop jogging. This pays me 2 whole weeks extra. Very motivating! Also, I don't know what might be written in the stars, but this week was full of tiny little joyful suprises and success.

1. The very first training without walking.
2. New training shoes which deserve a separate post.
3. The very first registration of the year: Vivicitta City Run, Budapest
4. The very first training where pace starts with a digit 6.
5. The very first scaling where my weight is below 80 kg: 78 kg on 6th February, 2013.
6. A nice extra plan is shaping, but I won't say more bout this...

By this  "without a particular reason I decided to go for a little run" and return to my training plan of the basic stage.

I have enough time now to complete the 10K training program of runnersworld.com until starting to train for the half marathon. So I try it out.

This is how I plan February:

January on the scale

Okay, a few weeks ago I made myself a promise, that I translate all my posts from Hungarian and I do not post a new one until I'm done. So I lied to myself. But obviously I have to hurry up, 'cos I'm about to finish the 8th week of trainings.

Here is a post from 6th February, 2013:

Just to let you know it's not only bloggerblablabla, here I am to proove hard work is going on behind the curtains, thank you very much.

Remember replanning, I took off from nil. On exactly the 4th of January I got myself together and left off to the fresh air.

I would't bother pace results as I run and walk. And to make an excuse 'cos of the home made excel sheet, I have no gadgets of any kind (inc. phone, sport watch, pulse counter) to present very smart diagrams, maps and stuff. Yet.

What I am proud of:

1. Grim determination = regularity
I skipped only one training and truly because I had to take care of my children and decided not to take them on my back with me this time.
2. Progress
I stuck to the plan, ran when said, rest when said. Most of my colleagues would be able to create a beautiful sinuous diagram out of the results. I can't. I'm a lawyer.
3. MY HUSBAND'S POSITIVE ATTITUDE
Should have put it in the first place!
...and he is babysitting when needed... and he is interested about my trainings (or at least acting like that)... and he is supporting me... Heeey, it feels great! I assume he is waiting for the bombastic looking wife at the end of this story :)

What I would rather hide and forget:

1. Distance
Okay, now I am taking a deep breath and trying to imagine that the marathon is as long as my total January. distance. (Or, Pio, remember Arré???? Better not! That is the marathon distance. Not hiking. Running.)
2. Time
I must say I was faster when I was running pregnant. I will not be dissapointed. Everything will be juuuust fine, you'll see!
3. Weight
No changes on the scale from 81 kgs after a month. So I have started the 90 days diet.

Problem: my running shoes are not strong and brave enough to complete this mission. In tears though, I have to say byebye. They were my unselfish, devoted partners from the very beginning. Practically they don't have a sole anymore. Besides, they started to rip off the skin from my toes and a nasty bloodshot appeared on my little toe. Lovely, lovely first ever running shoes of mine. Rest in peace.

January replanning from nil - Basic stage

Okay, a few weeks ago I made myself a promise, that I translate all my posts from Hungarian and I do not post a new one until I'm done. So I lied to myself. But obviously I have to hurry up, 'cos I'm about to finish the 8th week of trainings.

Here is a post from the 2nd February, 2013:

Staring at the photos of New Years Eve Drinking, on which I parade still in pregnant clothes, I knew I must give up on my pride.

New Years Eve Drinking

I gotta go back to where I've started in 2010. I will rehash the training program I learned to run with. It came up to all my expectations at the time when I couldn't even run around the block and House MD could run me down limping. (and Piotrek :P)

I plan not to care about anything else but Groundwork until 18th, March which is my 32nd birthday. And by Groundwork I mean, I will do all the basic training it takes to be able to build upon in the long run.

Looking at my January results I think this was a smart idea. I made my own 4 x 40 minutes training plan from that particular beginner's course and I am in the middle of it. No pain, I started to shape up and I looove it.

This is how the schedule of the first 8 weeks looks like:

I'm running the 5th week now. It was yesterday to run the Cooper tests I have already mentioned.  I feel that I could do a lot more, but I don't want to risk it.

Besides, I r-e-a-l-l-y have to loose some weight because it is too much to carry around. Zoli Grandpa - who happened to be a family doctor - used to say that overweight is like a backpack full of bricks what we carry on our back even to the toilet. Who wants to rest there with a backpack??? Like it or not, it's a must to start a diet or something. In January I tried not to eat any bread, pasta, cakes at all. I failed. I say the most probable cause of this is that nowadays I bake the bread at home. And that smell... I also tried to skip dinner and eat a yoghurt instead. I failed. It always ended up in a messy night stuffing just after I had to get up to one of the kids. Now we are doing the 5th day of the 90 days diet. It's plural coa Rali decided to be in on a racket and I'm soooo happy about it. Yesterday it was Fruits Day to survive and we laughed at and with eachother so much. ("Hey, is sausage considered to be a fuit?") So the day went a lot less horrible than expected...

This is for now. (However, I'm the greatest in making schedules but sticking to them....)

Great annual plan

Okay, a few weeks ago I made myself a promise, that I translate all my posts from Hungarian and I do not post a new one until I'm done. So I lied to myself. But obviously I have to hurry up, 'cos I'm about to finish the 8th week of trainings.

Here is a post from the 3rd February, 2013:

It's great to be a blogger, 'cos it is less probable that I'm gonna "make an ass of my mouth", or so they say it in Hungarian. For example, today for sure the bad devil in me would have won when deciding to jog or not: I mean, going outside in the whirling snow and windstorm? You bet!

Nevertheless, just to motivate myself somehow, I did not turn to the Rákospatak ("Crabcreek" - more a small channel not too far from our house) as I usually do, but I followed the road straight to see how close will I make it to the Városliget ("City Park) where I wish to do my so called long runs later. To my greatest surprise I reached it. And ran back home.  Aaand I wasn't even tired.

Well, this experience gives me the chills, so I'm gonna take the opportunity right here and now to block in what big-big-training-schedule I have in my head.

Very unfortunate, but no personal trainer rang and begged me to be honoured by having me as an ew challenge. By this, I'm trying to get all info from the internet. I gotta say, I haven't read as much as for the last week since college.

1st JANUARY - 17th MARCH: Basic trainings

No races planned at this stage.

18th MARCH - 9th JUNE: 12 weeks HALF MARATHON TRAININGS

Races:
Vivicitta - 21st April: 10K
K&H Olimpic Marathon and Half Marathon - 9th June.: 1st half marathon

24th JUNE- 10th NOVEMBER:  20 weeks MARATHON TRAININGS

Races:
Nike Budapest Half Marathon - 8th September.: 2nd half marathon
Athens International Marathon - November 10.

This is my plan for now.

The City Park

The day I died

I thought I'll wait for Nika to get another note in, but things have been happening and I think it should report on the recent developments. I nearly died. The usual thing happens - I'm running and running and all things go fine until I feel a stab of pain. Fab, I think. Here goes the hard and the future. I shall die as a relatively young and moderately handsome inept runner. I kept running thinking how to arrange necessary ceremonies, distribute rather insignificant early possessions and find a respectable home for the cat when I realised it might not be a heart attack. Just a side crampie.

Other than that things are going relatively well. I can run up to 4.5 km before my body realises that things ain't very comfortable and perhaps we should have a bit of a repose. Honestly - I find this quite amazing. I do an awful lot of cycling and martial arts but I never was a runner. I think that within this week I intentionally ran more than in my whole life altogether. What is more surprising - I'm enjoying it and chances are I'll keep doing this even when I'm through this whole crazy marathon thing.

On a bit of unrelated note - we'll be getting setting up some chartiable targets, I've had a brief look around and it seem relatively easy to set up. So within a week or two I'll put a new note advising on how you can part with your money and support something worthwhile and give us this nice buzzy feel that we're doing a good thing

It seems a bit personal

Or such is my feeling and impression. I'll skip the sad parts of my life as a blob (yes, I was a round one) and will get to a confession. I don't like running. Really. I never liked it. I won't event run to catch a bus. The idea that got me sold to Camino, which I mentioned in earlir posts, was the utter lack of running. Yst here I am - gasping my way through the decrepit streets of suburban London. All thanks to some Hungarian lady (don't trust Hungarians!).

Admittedly Nika sent me a plan on how to start the training. I did not follow it at all. Possibly I would have, but regular lifestyle doesn't quite work if you have a partner, a cat, a job and all the things you never consider being a young & em... a careless person.

So I admit. I ran. I ran like a gazelle. A very old, wounded, sick, three-legged gazelle. But it counts! On the upside I seem to be able to maintain this sickly tempo for about 20-30 minutes. This is as much time as I had over the past few days. I plan to up the ante next week or so as it seems that cycling to work throughout the last year actually gave me some stamina!

A bad example how to get back into shape: fumbling in autumn

No matter how hard I had been waiting for the birth of Csinszka, the same elephant left the hospital with the tiny little difference of carrying a meek baby. Like if she was stolen or something. The awful truth is that people keep asking whether I was expecting the next one. Even if they knew the baby is a couple of months old (really... I don’t understand people...)

I gotta say: this really bothers me. Even if it’s „just baby mom’s fat”, even if it’s „just 15-20 kilos”.

I got so depressed that as soon as I finished with breast feeding my girl, I hurried out on the street and trotted 5km every second day. For a week. Though I haven’t jogged a centimeter since April - instead going through a long-long pregnancy and giving birth to a child of 4020 gramms - I jumped slam jam in the middle of the previous routine, just where I’ve left off. Seriously, I do not understand myself either. Gradation: nil. Reasonableness: nil. This happened in autumn. A typical example of how to destroy my ankles, knees and hips and fall into deeper streams of exasperation.

This attempt ended in a great miserable gluttony of Christmas cakes.

Never ever do the same!

How to set yourself huge goals in less than a second?

Nothing is more simple than that: meet Piotrek and consider it done! 

Everybody wants a friend, a pally like him. Never let’s you down. Never says no. Tolerates you at all times. Should you come up with some mad idea, he is in.

Our friendship is quite rhapsodical. In 2005/2006 both of us lived in Maribor for a couple of month to enrich the drunk horde of international students. We lived on the same corridor and and along with some other fellows we spent days and nights together. Then – as usual – we travelled home and chatted fewer and fewer times.

Once upon a day in the fall of 2007 I was travelling on a crowded bus no.7 (the nastiest beast of Budapest) when the idea popped in my head: I walk camino de santiago. A repeatedly told story is that I was searching for a fellow-traveler for months pointless, when Piotrek found me one day at work on skype. He asked what’s up and so I told: I want to ask him to come with me. Just a little walk of 900 km in Spain. He said okay in less than 3 minutes. So we walked, journey was fab, Pio aquired the best ever fellow-traveller award. Then – as usual – we travelled home and chatted fewer and fewer times. Again.

Five years went by. Two weeks ago I fretted and fumed, thinking about a thousand things at the same time, including my belly, running and so on. And suddenly - as if I were on that bus no 7. - marathon came to me. But who would take me seriously? Piotrek. I wrote him an e-mail of three lines asking to be the friend again who does not let me down. He said okay in a day. That’s the way it goes... But he asked back where to run.

Let’s show off and be „very stylish”. Let it be a marathon in Marathon.

This way we register to the ATHENS INTERNATIONAL MARATHON RUN – 10TH NOVEMBER, 2013.

277 days to go.

I’m totally  excited!

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The very short sport history of mine

Before 2008 I was not a jogger. I used to avoid all kinds of excercise. Okay, I love to snowboard, but using some of my muscles for a week once a year I wouldn’t call regular sporting. I went to school, then to college, then started working, I used to party, eat, drink, smoke, but a lot. As you can imagine, I wasn’t fit or thin at all. My original relationship to running goes something like this: in high school I used to ask my PE teacher to give me an F straight away but let me skip the agony of a Cooper test (12 minutes nonstop running).

During the summer of 2008 Piotrek from Poland and me, two erasmus buddies walked the camino from Saint Jean Pied de Port to Finisterra. No matter how I count, this is 900 km in 30 days. I didn’t do much physical preparation before the trip, however, it brought a great big change in my life, namely: I had to realize that it’s awesome to be fit and trained. (Little extra info: despite my sanctified irradiation, I smoked 2 packs a day still...)

My lovely husband and me got married in 2009. (Most certainly he didn’t know he is entering a bad mess with me...) Our little boy, Xavér was born the same year, so I left all gained theoretical aim and knowledge on regular exercise in Spain.

In August 2010 the big question started buzzing me: what to do with 8 kilos of baby mom’s fat. While I was sitting on the coach at home, horizontally challenged,  trying to figure out what to do, Piotrek sauntered El Camino del Norte, this time without my amusing company.

the gorgeous Margaret Island of Budapest

 

On 8th August, 2010 – having no better idea – I started jogging for my first 5 kilometers. I’ve accomplished my first ever round on Margaret Island on 19th September, 2010 with 00:33:45. (This is the most popular jogging route of Budapest, so called „the pudding”, ’cos of the special gummy material of the path – 5300 m – 1/8 of the marathon). Anybody who feels running 5 km is like hiking the Everest (I felt like that myself) and wishes to do the challenge, you all find the training plan that taught me to jog here.

the pudding

In 2011 my plan was to train myself up to 10 km for my own amusment. With irregular and very few trainings I’ve made it on 2nd October, 2011 in 1:14:59. Also, 5 days before that I smoked my last cigarette. (All former smokers know that this is the real thing.) Now that was the moment when I’ve promised myself I’m gonna take jogging more seriously and I’m gonna push it to a regular basis, no matter what.

Besides, I made this big resolution that in 2012 I try out how it feels to participate in a race and I run the half marathon. But life tricked me again, because at the beginning of the year we got the great news that our second baby, a girl is on the way. So came intoxicationg happiness and the urge of eating chocolates, pizza and doughnuts for not two but six. Ohohhit’s no good! As soon as my doc gave me greenlight in the second semester, I started very easy jogging. Then a great deep breath and I found myself registering for the Midicitta. This is a 6200 m run in the sessions of Vivicitta Run for the City of Budapest every spring. Under medical supervision I ran as much as I felt comfortable. On Fool’s Day, 1st April, 2012 we’ve accomplished the distance with Csinszka in my belly. Time: 00:43:46. Rank: 705 and 705.5. The race was fabulous and unforgettable.

On 10th September 2012 our cutey girl was born. And what about me? Deep deep fall in my physical status and again: 16 kilos of baby mom’s fat.

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Two mad people

So, a bit of an introductory note... Once upon a time there were two mad people. And they walked through Spain. One of them developed this into a chronic condition and repeated the feat. The other didn't fall much behind and kept on having ideas. So this is how this blog started - the next big idea is a Marathon. Because heck, why not.

So a bit about us: Pio (as Nika calls me) - Polish guy, currently living in London though known to occupy Krakow, parts of Slovenia and disturbingly frequently seen in Northern Spain. Or India. Apart from tendency to wander and travel he cooks (a lot) and trains martial arts. One has to mention an unabated fondness of wine. Few years ago he got asked by Nika whether he would spend couple of weeks with her walking Camino de Santiago. If you haven't heard about this one the principle is simple. Go to French/Spanish border, pack whatever you need into a single back-pack of no more than 10kg, turn west and walk until you reach the ocean. Some 900km they say. And so they walked. Two years later he left everything in Krakow and did it again, this time along Northern coast of Spain (Camino del Norte) and moved to London, carrying all his earthly belongings contained in neat suitcase, where he's been since.

Nika - known mainly as Nika. Undoubtedly Hungarian in origin. Prone to have bucket lists and ideas beyond regular's person comprehension. Apart from that she's a keen singer, yet frequently picks somewhat unusual spots to indulge in her vocal inclinations. Currently living in Budapest, a mother of two and a wife of one. Or so Pio has been told. They havent met for a while and given what they tend to get into suggest they possibly shouldn't too often.

So the plan for this year is to run Marathon, in Greece where once upon a time some brave Greek fellow did just the same thing. Pio's reason is simple. It makes no sense but is doable. And perhaps he might manage to organise some small charity money from it and donate to something worthwhile. Nika does the bucket list and plans to get fit. Plus charity of course.

Stay tuned, we will soon get to the nitty gritty detail, because someone ought to run. Pronto, really pronto.

Some thoughts to begin with

 Darling-the-baby-is-crying, what-would-you-like-to-be-on-haloween, don’t-forget-your-lunchbox, at-what-time-will-you-finish-today, I’m-going-to-the-market-today, who’s-picking-him-up-from-nursery, gosh-she-blew-the-carrot-juice, stop-running-around-with-no-shoes-on, ooo-she-pooped, she-must-be-teething, what-did-you-eat-for-lunch-today-baby, how-was-work-today-darling… And even this overweight…

I thought I wish to be slim again. I thought I have to get some time for myself. I thought I have to pick something from my Bucket List again. I thought about a marathon. 10.11.2013 – MARATHON-ATHENS INTERNATIONAL MARATHON RUN. This blog is all about the way getting there.
 

The most important in my life is My lil’ family: Rali, my husband (oh, what a handsome man), Xavér, my 4 years old little scallywag and Csinszka the four months old fairy of mine. I live the ordinary life of Hungarian baby moms full of little miracles and I gotta say I really do enjoy this!

However, I do have my ordinary baby mom problems as well. I guess it’s included in the package. I never have enough time for myself,  I’m being exhausted all the time, I feel myself locked up in the house now and then. And let’s not forget about the same old story of „bloodyhellimreallyfat” ’cos – for the record – I have a life belt of 16 kg extra since my little girl was born.

On my standard list of new year resolutions I had utterly interesting stuff like loosing weight, regular sporting activities, but Piotrek popped in again and from my annual plans suddenly a 42.195 m run emerged. Same old…same old… I definitely plan to write more about the Piotrek-phenomenon.

I consider myself to be a „panic-machine”, though, I’m a tough girl, better than a mule. Also, I become fond of giant challenges. This is how running the marathon got on my bucket list. At this very moment I’m still a hobby-jogger. At this very moment I have no idea how to runa marathon. I have no idea what kind of physical challenge I’m about to face here; what is it to train five times a week for this distance and my only race-experience is a 6.2 km city run from the days of my pregnancy. I do not understand runners’ language and I have no clue about running theory, runners’ clothes and gadgets’.

I know only one thing: I'm  gonna run it this year. How I’m gonna do it, how I'm gonna afford it, I guess it will come all along the way…

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