12 km I did it...

Okay, after I wrote my next application and some e-mails I got on my feet and did the 12 k.

The course (12,2 km) was from google maps and the estimated time was 2:28 hrs. I didn't wear my running clothes, but my Nike Free 5.0 and I ROCKED the street. Yeah.

It took me 2:00 hrs flat!

Okay, I had to stop at some traffic lights and to drink and to get another chewing gum, so I was probably a bit faster than that.

The first 90 minutes were fine, after that I had to push myself to keep going and to not take shortcuts. (I'm lazy.)
Next thing was, in the first quarter I found it pretty interesting how many Fast Food Stores were along my way. I mean over the whole 12 km were "uncountable" (told ya, I'm lazy) Fast Food Stores and bakeries, but only 3 fruit and vegetable stores!

Now I don't believe in these conspiracy theories, that the goal of the Fast Food Industry is to make us fat and fatter. They want to make money, alright, but they would provide whatever we want to eat, they don't care so much about what it is. For example, have a look at the big M, what do the people eat when they go there (and I'm no exception)? It's the burgers and fries, not the salad. They offer them and I don't think they are bad either (the salads, not the employees), but the people don't choose to eat them. And this is the way with all the Fast Food Restaurants.

Now at the beginning of the trip I found these food stores funny, at the end of my course I was so hungry, I could have broken with my diet right then and there, because I was ravenous. Luckily for my new lifestyle I had no money on me (useless weight, if you haven't guessed already: I'M LAZY!). So I had to get home and eat there.

When I got home at 4:30 pm, I made myself a wonderfull tossed salad with tomatoes and bell pepper and 3 (!) boiled eggs. Aaahhh, what a relieve! Interestingly, when I got home I had lots of energy, but after I had munched my salad I was totally worn out. I promised myself a special treat, but I had to go and buy it. It took me 5 attempts to get up. The conversation in my head was something like this:

"And off we go" "nah" (no movement whatsoever)
"common" "naaah"(still no movement)
"choooocolate, but we've got to buy it" "uh" (slight movement of the upper body parts)
"common it's not that far" "sigh" (you guessed it: no movement)
"chocolate now!!!" "uuuhhhh maaaaannnnnnnn" (I sloooowly got up)

I bought not only a fabulous treat, but I also got myself magnesium which I can "eat" on the run.

Okay, this is my treat:

Looks delicious, doesn't it? Dark chocolate is better than milk chocolate because it contains less sugar. Due to the Paleo Diet I shouldn't eat chocolate, but as I said before, no one gets between me and my chocolate! This box contains 6 pralines. I've decided that I grant myself one piece after my long slow runs. Therefore it should last for 3 weeks.

Sooo tasty. *sigh*

Okay, todays stats:
time: 2:00:39 hrs
in zone: 38:00 min (I was too slow)
heartreate: 119 bpm

Two posts today, wow, I'm chatty. (Good thing, I don't have an iPhone (yet), otherwise there'd be even more posts.)

KEEP RUNNING!

PS: Thankfully, it didn't rain! And Monthy Pythons "Always look on the bright side of life" at the right time.

Paleo food works and

sorting out too! I've sorted out tons of paper, socks, underwear (ahem) and CDs (63 in the first fast going through, and my racks are still not containing all of them. I guess thats why I don't have the money for a race bike or car or ... (fill in what you'd like).).

Anyway, I cut out dairy products yesterday and today my skin is a LOT better. Bloody Hell! This means no cheese anymore or hot chocolate with Baileys (not good anyway because alcohol sponges your magnesium out (is "sponging out" the right expression?)). This whole drink a glass of red wine everyday is just flapdoodle (hah, my new favourite english word "flapdoodle") to make you buy more wine! (And magnesium supplements and Aspirin afterwards to battle the hangover.)

Today I have to run / march 12 k and it rains! BUGGER!! First I have to write my applications though.

Mampf - Diary, Monday:
BF: 300 ml protein shake chocolate with water instead of milk, 1 sliced apple
Lunch: 1 Dream Apple (Cinnamon is good for your blood sugar. If you want to reduce it, take cinnamon.)
Dinner: Tossed salad with a red bell pepper and baked salmon, 1 Dream Apple
Snacks: 1 Banana, dark chocolate, a bag of nuts (50g)

Keep Running!

A Day out of time

you sometimes need days like this. And yesterday certainly was one for me.

I went to sleep really late Saturday night 4 o'clock in the morning. No, I haven't been out, it was what I call a "link-aton" on youtube. I started watching with some video, by midnight I wanted to watch "The Glass Slipper" with Leslie Caron (I love this movie and wish the would finally release it on DVD). Thanks to the Pawlowian reflex I'm trained to eat something while watching it. And since I had no bell pepper already cut, I turned to toast bread. (Which is wrong on sooo many levels.) Gone the two days of nearly eating Paleo (the cheese remember?!).

Here's my first trick for you, always keep some fresh vegetable pieces in the refrigerator ready to eat. Because sometimes you just need something to nosh on and are mostly to lazy to make something at these moments. Prepare some slices of apple, bell pepper, carrots or whatever you like. But remember, it has to be raw and non-starchy. I love green bell peppers for this, funnily enough I don't like them cooked or baked, they are getting too bitter for me through it.

My Mampf Diary of Saturday, 28.11.09:
BF: 400 ml of chocolate protein shake, 1 sliced apple
Lunch: 1 saladheart (green salad which is sold as a triplet, I found that 1 saladheart is just the right amount for a salad for me alone), cherry tomatoes, 1 red bell pepper, some mushrooms & a diced and baked turkey cutlet.
Dinner: non, since I ate lunch a 5:30pm.
Snacks: 1 green bell pepper, 1 bag of nuts, 2 slices of toast.

My lunch salad. (Sorry that it's so blurry, I haven't found the right way to take these pictures, but I'm working on it. :-)

Trick No. 2: As you've read I ate a bag of nuts. Now before you're too shocked. Nuts are perfect for your body, rich in good fatty acids and other stuff, really low in carbohydrats. Still you shouldn't eat too much. Now since they are so munchable you easily eat too much, but you can outwit yourself fairly easy. Put the allowed amount (something around 50 g per day) in small(!) zipper bags, this way you can't overeat unconsciously. I bought a 200g bag of nuts and put about 50 grams in the zipper bags. (Since it was a nutmix I actually counted every sort of nut and put the same amount in every bag. I know, I'm weird, it probably comes with the engineering, everything has to be measured. ;-) You don't have to count them, if you've got a kitchen scale it's much easier, but I don't have one, so... (I think I'll get myself one for x-mas.) These little snack bags are really practical, you can put one in your bag/purse, this way your not tempted to get some easily available sweets (e.g. cupcakes or really bad things like donuts, don't get me wrong I like them too) or burger.

Back to my Sunday. I had to get up fairly early (8 am) to meet with my friend at the flea market (9:30 am). I walked there (2.5 km) and didn't buy a thing (proudly swelled chest;-). The market was a lot smaller then the last time and no interesting stuff. But my friend and I talked about a job offer for which I have an interview in exactly two weeks, about which I have really split feelings (Story for another post). When I came back (11am), I repaired my bed together with my dad and then we had lunch. Afterwards I took a really long sunday afternoon nap, because of my sleeping deficit. The dream I had was a nice mixture of a lot of my favourite stories and stayed with me when I woke. So I dozed along, since it was already dark outside and could think of nothing better to do. Later on I watched "Howl's Moving Castle" (if you haven't watched it yet, you should it's one of my alltime favs) and got to bed fairly early.

Sunday Mampf Diary:
BF: 400 ml of chocolate protein shake,
Lunch: scalloped cutlets, salsifies, apple puree
Dinner: 4 slices of toast with hungarian peperoni (my mom bought the peperoni just for me, so I had to eat it, otherwise there would have been a 'discussion', now that there is no peperoni left I can eat fully Paleo)
Snacks: 1 Dream Apple, 3 pieces of dark chocolate

Since I was in a hurry yesterday morning I didn't weigh myself. But I did today, so its SCAL(R)E DAY.
weight: 65,3 kg (300 gr. less than Friday, impressing no?)
water: 51,1 %
bodyfat: 30,0 % (1,4% less, but don't get too excited, I think it's because I changed some of the parameters, the activity level is 3 now and was 2 on friday)
muscles: 34,0 %
Next SCAL(R)E DAY is Sunday.

I won't run or march today, but do some stretching and crunches to strengthen my stomach muscles. Tomorrow I march/run 12 km though.

Enough, this post is a lot longer than I wanted it to be.

Keep running!

What do you eat? My Food or better my Mampf Diary ;-)

Good Morning. And what a lovely morning it is here in Leipzig. The sun is shining and it's 10° C in the shadow. Pretty warm for November.

I've decided Thursday night to go for the marathon distance and throw all my knowledge and will in. Most of my decisions I will decide on whats best for my running / marathon performance. And two things, which are interlinked, are crucial for it. My weight and my diet(style of eating not diet as in I want to lose weight).

Over the past years, I've tried a lot of eating styles, from Forever Young over Paleo and Raw Food to "French women don't get fat". By far the best for my health, my skin in particular and my weight is the Paleo Diet of Dr. Loren Cordain. It's got (just) 6 ground rules, which are deal breakers for most people, and even I don't stick to all of them. But since you have to make anything your own to really live it, I think it's okay and it works for me.

The ground rules (page 20 of The Paleo Diet):
1. All the lean meats, fish, and seafood you can eat
2. All the fruits and nonstarchy vegetables you can eat
3. No cereals
4. No legumes
5. No dairy products (I don't stick with this rule, because I love cheese and my body tolerates it just fine)
6. No processed foods (You can say what you want, nobody gets between me and my chocolate)

Okay, bear with me, I'm only human. So I bend the rules to be comfy this lifestyle and stick with it about 90 % of the time. I do have cheese (chaumes cheese from france) and milk/hot chocolate occasionally, and I won't trade my chocolate and proteinshakes (processed food + dairy). I didn't have any trouble to stop eating cereals (never liked bread anyway), rice and potatoes.

Now a lot you will be taken aback, because Pasta is supposed to be the runners food. But how do you feel after a big portion of pasta? Full of energy or tired? Ever felt this way after a huge bowle of tossed salad with some nuts, tomatos and mushrooms? Well, the reason is that our digestive system is calibrated for the latter and not for Pasta parties and donuts (a real toxin for us, I like them still but hate how I feel afterwards and I don't mean the guilt).

So, to give you an idea how this diet works on a daily basis and to control me for the first few weeks, (I've started out only yesterday) I will write a food diary. It's in fact part of my training diary.

Which looks like this. I'll write down what I ate, my training chores, my weight and some other factors (I'm a girl as you know, so there goes a bit more in the equation - like hurting feet from wearing high heels all day - just kidding.)

Okay, since I started out yesterday with my marathon programm for real, I got my scale out, which is a diagnosis scale from Beurer, it takes not only the weight, but body fat, water and muscles too. Ooh, the embarrassment, I had my doubts that I really lost 2 kg (4lbs) since I moved to Leipzig, but to see it proved ... ouch.

Yesterdays SCALE stats (height 163 cm, activity level 2 (moderate activity)):
weight: 65,6 kg (sob, snivel, cry)
water: 50,0 % (fine level)
body fat: 31,4 % (way too high, goal: 15% or less)
muscles: 34,1 % (goal: more, how much? I'll check and give you the figure on the next weight post, which should be up tomorrow. Remember? Sundays are SCALE (Scare)Days.)
bones: 7,5 kg

Food = Mampf Diary (mampfen is german slang for munching = Munch Diary) November 27, 2009:
Breakfast: 400 ml protein shake (chocolate), 1 bowl of Dream Apple
Lunch: turkey with tomatoes, a bell pepper baked and some chaumes cheese (see pic below)
Dinner: 1 big bowl of Dream Apple with an orange
Snacks: 1 sharon/kaki, 1 carrot

The diced (?) turkey with tomatoes and bell pepper. Yesterdays lunch.

Todays breakfast: 400 ml chocolate protein shake, 1 sliced fuji apple and I had a cup of black tea with it.

That's it for today. Tomorrows post will be late, since I'll go to a flea market (I'll take pics) with a friend of mine and then it's 10 km fast walking in the afternoon. Today I'll write some more job applications and find some nice recipes to try for the next days. And clean my room, throw some useless paper away, buy groceries, stuff like that.

Have a wonderfull weekend and Keep running.

And I thought I was doing good....

but I had no idea what I'm in for. So today I went to the opening of my runners seminar. There were a lot of people, in total about 300, so the room was packed. Then the organizers talked about ... the organization. The participants of the seminar can decide until March 30th which distance we want to run. Since the races are scheduled for April 25th thats pretty late, but good for us since we can decide when we see how the training develops.

As for me I'm undecided, in my good moments I say I go for the marathon, in my really good moments, I say I for a marathon time of 4:30 hrs and in my bad moments it's 'just' half marathon. :-P And when I saw the training times and distances, my selfesteem dropped through to Australia. But I got myself the marathon plan anyway and my jaw dropped, when I saw the distances. I told you, that I was surprised how short my route is. But guess what. Last week I ran about 7 km, this week it will be about 7 + 15 km of fast walking. Because my next weeks schedule says Tuesday 10 km, Thursday 10 km (training on the blue tartan track) and Sunday its 15 km. Since our coach wants us to get our fat metabolism going, I will walk my Alone-trainings-routes.

The coach said something about diet to, but I'll give you that and my opinion on it tomorrow.

Right now, it's time for todays run. I felt a bit sluggish today which was due to the waffle and that I rode my bike to the city. In the end I was quite a bit slower than on monday. Let's get to the stats:

distance: 3.5 km
time: 31:30 min
PACE: 9 min (yeah, there are a lot of people who walk faster than I run including me)
in zone: 15:22 min (better)
heart: 161 bpm (163 is my threshold)

And now a few pics of the leipzig christmas market and the famous waffle with vanilla creme. Enjoy.

The entrance.



The tree.



The waffle bakery.



The Waffle with THE Vanilla cream.



A nice view.

Keep running.

I'm not alone anymore and doing the math...

Wahooooooo. I finally found some other woman out there blogging who run and/or are triathletes. So, HALLO LADIES!!! (I'll post the links tonight.) Sorry about my loud voice, but I'm so excited. Sharing tricks and stories. I can't wait!

We've got fabulous weather today, so I will ride my bike (pics coming soon) to my appointments. And in the afternoon (if the weather is still this good, no point in doing it in the rain) I will walk my current running route and take some pictures for you.

And there we are. This night I did my math, since I have my first runners seminar tomorrow. The results of the math were devastating to me. I knew I'm a slooow runner, but my 'pace' is ridiculous. I'm not sure if you can even call it a pace! I'm mortified.
Okay, stop rambling, San.

My current running distance is 3,5 km for which I need exactly 30 minutes with a pulse that is over my anaerob threshold (yeah, I did the test). So my current pace is 8:57! (Boston here I come, hahaha.) So, my estimated times for 10k = 1:22 hr, hm = 3:00 hrs (my time last year was actually 2:58 hrs, I was the second last if I remember it right), m = 6 hrs. I know I would get throught a marathon, I've got the will, but I probably wouldn't be able to walk the whole week afterwards. When I did my halfmarathon last year, I had to walk down the stairs backwards for 3 days!!! It hurt like hell.

I've already scheduled my training days for the coming weeks, but I don't have clue what to do about the distances and the pace. It really is about time that I got a coach, there is only so much you can do alone. ;-P

For next week I've planned to run an extra kilometer, but now I'm not so sure anymore. Should I stick with this distance and push my pace? Or should I run a fast round at the weekend, instead of a long run (not that I do that at the moment ;-). What do you think? Ulrich Th. Strunz, the fitness pope of germany, says go for the distance. But I don't want to stay that slow. I always wished I could run with this long, strong strides and not shuffle along like I do! I WANT TO BE A RUNNER!!! (sob and snivel) And I want a training schedule from Peter Greif, but for that I had to run 10 k in 40 min, which is a loooong way to go.

Well, this is it for now. Have to get my bike out. Oh, before I forget, today I get my first waffle with vanilla creme of the season at the christmas market. I'm so excited. I'll take pictures and post them. Promise.

Tell me what you think about the distance/pace problem. Any suggestions?

Keep running!!

3 Days, this is it....

Just a quick one, since I'm tired and have to rise early tomorrow.

I did run today and I actually enjoyed it very much. After 3 days my body has not only fully recovered but is even fitter than before. Next training is scheduled for Thursday accordingly.

Here are todays stats:

Exe Time: 30:32 min (I ran the same distance as last Wednesday)
In Zone: 7:14 min (wow, this surprises me because I felt fine running at this pace, weird huh?)
Average Heartrate: 163 bpm

Keep running!