Time: 24 mins 14 secs
Distance: 4 kms (Last km was fartlek. Need to do that more often. Felt good)
Avergae Pace: 6 mins 3 secs / km
Temp: 33 C
Humidity 75%
Mileage on Nikes:

Run you fool, run.

Ran. Toe has healed. It's the lil toe, so it doesn't move much anyway. It was very hot and humid, my favourite kind of running weather, except I was very very lazy, so didn't run much.

Distance: 3 km
Time: 19 mins
Average Pace: 6 mins 19 secs/km
Best Pace: 3 mins 17 secs/km
Temp: 31 C
Humidity: 79% (felt like rain!)
Mileage on Nikes: whatever

9 miles untimed

In my excitement to post on my own blog about my last run, I didn't post it here.

9 miles of pavement carving their way into my knees =P

Writeup here.

4.5miles untimed

I ran on the road after ages yesterday. I'm fasting these days, so I can't run during the day, but my response so far was to not run at all.

Yesterday my roommate said I was looking fat.

At 3am.

So I put on my shoes and hit the road, planning on just walking, but then I couldn't help myself and ran/walked the 4.5 miles. It wasn't quite an unbroken run, but that wasn't the point. I interspersed it with skipping about and just having a good time. The weather was great, and it all felt really nice.

The one black mark was the realization that about 18 months ago, I had almost exactly the same physical fitness as I do today. There were times in between when I was much fitter, but let exercise go for a few weeks and you lose it all very quickly.

Anyway, I guess the positive is that I haven't bloated as badly as I could have...

Toe not healing. I thikn I have a hair-line fracture or something. Crap. Too lazy to go to a doctor.

Distance: 3.38 km
Time: 18 mins 24 secs
Pace: 5 mins 27 secs / km (was at 5 mins a kilometer after the first 2 kms. Got screwed in the 3rd)
Temperature: 33 C
Humidity: 84%
Mileage on Nikes: 244.75
Mileage in 2008: 35.97 km

Really need to break 10 km soon. About the only time I have the energy to run these days is on days I skip work or on holidays. Something has to change.

Crap crap crap.

Return of the IBS?

I went through a period of digestive madness at LUMS (courtesy pre-LUMS stresses and PDC food) from 2005-2007. It got better after a year of IBS medication. In other words, I stopped throwing up. And now that I have settled into a work routine, I have realized it's not gone yet. The heavy duty stuff has gone, but the remnants..well, they remain. :S

I need to see a good gastroenterologist in Karachi. Crap.
No pun intended.

Distance: 2.04 km
Time: 10 mins 54 secs
Pace: 5 mins 21 secs / km
Temperature: 28 C
Humidity: 79%
Mileage on Air Max:

Toe has almost healed. Didn't hurt during the run at any rate.

Distance: 2.57 km
Time: 14 minutes 20 seconds
Avg Pace: 5 minutes 49 seconds / km
Humidity: 79%
Temperature: 29C

One of these days, when I have enough sample points, I am going to do a multiple regression on run times and distances with humidity, temperature and time of day. That should be fun.

Changing speeds to go the distance...

I am thinking of taking up some of this advice, once my toe heals.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/fashion/17fitness.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

SARA HALL experienced an instructive epiphany in 2006. In the fall, she’d won the national road-running championship for 5K (3.1 miles), a distance she specialized in at Stanford. At the time, she considered herself a 5K runner. So did everyone else.

Sara Hall, an aspiring Olympian runner, trains at UC Riverside by running speed drills around the lap.

Multimedia

Graphic

Related

This article is the second in a series that began with “A Swimmer’s Different Strokes for Success” (March 20).

Hall takes an ice bath after her daily exercise regimen to help with muscle recovery between training sessions.

A few weeks later, everything changed when she won the Fifth Avenue Mile in New York, a glamour event in American road racing. “Afterward, I thought, ‘That’s my distance,’ ” she said. “It plays to my strengths. I loved the fast pace. I’m not a patient runner.”

Today, Hall, 25, is laser-focused on training for the 1,500 meters (0.93 mile) in hopes of making the United States Olympic team in middle distance running.

She and her coach, Terrence Mahon, who also coaches Hall’s husband, Ryan Hall, the winner of the United States Olympic team men’s marathon trial, have increased her speed work and reconfigured how much she’s running and her intensity.

“Her work capacity has gone through the roof,” Mahon said, and she can run greater distances faster than ever before. Which makes her current regimen a good model for how recreational runners — not just the elite — can get swifter and sharper, and perhaps even decide that they have been racing the wrong distance all along.

SPEED THRILLS

“I’m not running as far these days,” Hall said, compared with the distances she ran in high school and college. That might come as a surprise to anyone who learns that her average weekly mileage remains 85 to 90 (compared with her husband’s 140-plus). A typical training week includes easy running on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday (usually twice a day). Hall, who can run almost a four-minute mile, lopes through these 30- or 50-minute workouts at a leisurely mile pace of 7 minutes. (To accurately figure her mile splits, she wears a watch equipped with G.P.S.) On Saturday, she takes a 14-mile run at a pace (5 minutes 45 seconds per mile) that is between what she runs in races and her easy days.

Then there are the fast, hard interval sessions at a track on Tuesdays and Thursdays. These hurt because they are supposed to. “You stress the body to get it to adapt” to the mechanical and physiological demands of speed, Mahon said. A typical Tuesday session includes two miles of warm-up, six miles of intervals and three miles of cool-down.

Anyone not aiming for an Olympic qualifying time should adjust speed-training mileage downward, Mahon said. “Go to a track and run a mile flat-out” and record your time, he said. Your ideal pace for a 5K race would be around 95 percent as fast per mile. Then implement what Mahon calls “over-speed and under-speed training.” In over-speed, you sprint through quarter-miles, 800 meters and other intervals at a speed faster than your 5K pace (close to your top mile time). Don’t run more than two fast miles.

For under-speed work, time your interval splits to be a little slower than your 5K pace, with shorter rest periods than those within the over-speed intervals. Total mileage can be four to six miles. Cool down with a gentle jog of about half your total interval distance.

Try sprinting one week, and running slower the next or, if you’re an experienced racer, both in separate sessions in a week. Don’t, despite its discomforts, worm out of speed work. “The most common mistake” that recreational runners make, Mahon said, “is running the same pace all the time.” Occasionally making yourself run fast, he said, “is the only way to make yourself a fast runner.”

STRIDE RIGHT

Hall kicks like a mule when she runs. She’s trying to stop. “This year, we’ve been totally focused on my form,” she said. “I tend to lean forward and I have a big back kick.” This slightly toppling stance lessens the power of her strides, and also has made her prone to being tripped up from behind during races.

Although some runners and coaches are loathe to fiddle with a runner’s stride, Mahon isn’t one of them. “Proper running form will lessen the chance of injuries and further the longevity of an athlete’s career,” he said. “It will improve running economy and allow the runner to run faster with less fuel expended.”

To help with form, “those of us in the elite-distance running community have started looking at what sprinters do,” Mahon said.

Ideally, he said, “You want a straight, perpendicular line between the ground and your ankle and knee.” So, for up to two hours a day, several times a week, Hall has been practicing various drills, which as she said, are designed to teach her to “keep your feet right underneath you.”

During each exercise, she said, she tried to land more toward her heels than her toes. This is known as “dorsiflexion” of the ankle, or a slight upward tilting of the foot. Mahon said this is the ideal foot-strike position. Landing flat-footed or near your heel, he said, “allows for the arch to work as a spring.” It also “allows for the ankle joint to disperse shock up to the knee and hip and lessen the total blow on a single joint.”

The drills seem to be working for Hall, who demonstrated some of her favorites on a recent Thursday while training at the University of California, Riverside, with her husband. “People have told me I look more upright,” she said. She hasn’t tangled legs with another racer for months. And, she said, her feet don’t hurt like they once did.

LOAD UP ON ICE

“You can’t keep up with a heavy workload” of running if you don’t recover between sessions, Mahon said. Hall schedules a weekly sports massage and, after hard interval sessions, settles herself into an ice bath (a tub filled with ice-cube-laced water at the sports medicine department at U.C. Riverside, where she trains) for 15 minutes.

This immersion is widely believed to help reduce the swelling and soreness that can follow intense workouts. Ice baths after intervals “feel really good,” she said. The scientific evidence is more equivocal.

A study published last month in the European Journal of Applied Physiology showed that cold-water immersion did hasten muscle recovery and also reduced swelling in men assigned to complete repeated leg press exercises. Other studies haven’t shown similar benefits from ice baths.

But Mahon, at least, believes ice baths are helpful in reducing swelling and soreness in his athletes, allowing them to return for another interval session within only a day or two. (Most sports medicine doctors suggest waiting until any significant muscle soreness is gone before repeating a hard workout.)

TRY IT, YOU MIGHT LIKE IT

“It can be hard for an average runner to know what his real genetic potential is,” Mahon said. “Many runners pick a distance and stick with it.” The dedicated, mediocre marathoner may never discover that nature had intended him to win his age group at 5Ks.

“You have to run different distances,” Hall said. “Experiment. If I hadn’t run that Fifth Avenue Mile, I wouldn’t be doing the 1,500 now.”

More systematically, Mahon says, track your performance during intervals. “Are you excelling in the workouts that highlight intensity or those that highlight endurance?” he said. “We saw that Sara was topping the charts in intensity.” She was clearly meant, he said, to be going hard, fast, and relatively short.

Destiny, of course, can be tweaked. Hall doesn’t expect to contest the 1,500 for the rest of her career. “The speed work that I’m doing now for the 1,500 will translate beautifully” to the 5K, she said, should she decide to run that distance at the 2008 United States Olympic Trials or at future Olympics.

Then there’s the marathon, which has an ineluctable pull. “Ryan makes the training look so fun,” she said almost wistfully. But for now, “I haven’t reached my potential in the 1,500. There’s still lots of speed to explore.

Running halted

Hurt my toes in a semi-fall on the steps.
Crap.
Need to break 10 km soon.

Pacing it

Paced myself after a long time. Tried to bring the pace down. It's been 6/5-7mins a kilometer lately for relatively longer runs of 6-8 kms.

Ran just 2.25 kms today, but did it at 4 min 57 secs a kilometer. Much better. Need to build stamina at this speed. It hurts. Dunno how Dave does it for 15 km.



Distance: 2.25 km
Time: 11 mins 10 secs
Pace: 4 mins 57 secs /km
Rest time: 45 secs
Temperature: 26 C
Humidity: 78%
Mileage on Nikes: 236.76 km
Mileage in 2008: 27.98 km

Running History

Number of runs since August 04: 57
Total distance run since Aug 04: 232.98 km
Average Distance run since Aug '04: 4.1 km
Total time run since Aug '04: 23.11 hours
Average time run since Aug '04: 24 minutes

I am certain there are runs missing here. I didn't keep accurate records back then. Oh well.



Dang, but I take the recreational runner bit to an extreme. Need to be more regular. Really need to be more regular.

Is!

Distance: 7.83 km
Time: 56 mins 33 secs
Pace: 7 mins 22 secs / km (yes yes, the pace is pathetic, but who cares at this point)
Temperature: 26 C
Humidity: 76%
Mileage on Nikes: 234.51 km
Mileage in 2008: 25.73 km (SHIT!)

The Garmin froze up on me yesterday. I thought I had lost it. Fortunately, a visit to Garmin's tech support website cured it.

Distance :2 km
=P
Crap run. Was in a bad mood anyway and the Garmin didn't help. I need to break 10 km again soon.


Soon.

Runner's High

Yes, Running Can Make You High

Filip Kwiatkowski for The New York Times

By GINA KOLATA

Published: March 27, 2008

THE runner's high: Every athlete has heard of it, most seem to believe in it and many say they have experienced it. But for years scientists have reserved judgment because no rigorous test confirmed its existence.

Yes, some people reported that they felt so good when they exercised that it was as if they had taken mood-altering drugs. But was that feeling real or just a delusion? And even if it was real, what was the feeling supposed to be, and what caused it?

Some who said they had experienced a runner's high said it was uncommon. They might feel relaxed or at peace after exercising, but only occasionally did they feel euphoric. Was the calmness itself a runner's high?

Often, those who said they experienced an intense euphoria reported that it came after an endurance event.

My friend Marian Westley said her runner's high came at the end of a marathon, and it was paired with such volatile emotions that the sight of a puppy had the power to make her weep.

Others said they experienced a high when pushing themselves almost to the point of collapse in a short, intense effort, such as running a five-kilometer race.

But then there are those like my friend Annie Hiniker, who says that when she finishes a 5-k race, the last thing she feels is euphoric. "I feel like I want to throw up," she said.

The runner's-high hypothesis proposed that there were real biochemical effects of exercise on the brain. Chemicals were released that could change an athlete's mood, and those chemicals were endorphins, the brain's naturally occurring opiates. Running was not the only way to get the feeling; it could also occur with most intense or endurance exercise.

The problem with the hypothesis was that it was not feasible to do a spinal tap before and after someone exercised to look for a flood of endorphins in the brain. Researchers could detect endorphins in people's blood after a run, but those endorphins were part of the body's stress response and could not travel from the blood to the brain. They were not responsible for elevating one's mood. So for more than 30 years, the runner's high remained an unproved hypothesis.

But now medical technology has caught up with exercise lore. Researchers in Germany, using advances in neuroscience, report in the current issue of the journal Cerebral Cortex that the folk belief is true: Running does elicit a flood of endorphins in the brain. The endorphins are associated with mood changes, and the more endorphins a runner's body pumps out, the greater the effect.

Leading endorphin researchers not associated with the study said they accepted its findings.

"Impressive," said Dr. Solomon Snyder, a neuroscience professor at Johns Hopkins and a discoverer of endorphins in the 1970's.

"I like it," said Huda Akil, a professor of neurosciences at the University of Michigan. "This is the first time someone took this head on. It wasn't that the idea was not the right idea. It was that the evidence was not there."

For athletes, the study offers a sort of vindication that runner's high is not just a New Agey excuse for their claims of feeling good after a hard workout.

For athletes and nonathletes alike, the results are opening a new chapter in exercise science. They show that it is possible to define and measure the runner's high and that it should be possible to figure out what brings it on. They even offer hope for those who do not enjoy exercise but do it anyway. These exercisers might learn techniques to elicit a feeling that makes working out positively addictive.

The lead researcher for the new study, Dr. Henning Boecker of the University of Bonn, said he got the idea of testing the endorphin hypothesis when he realized that methods he and others were using to study pain were directly applicable.

The idea was to use PET scans combined with recently available chemicals that reveal endorphins in the brain, to compare runners' brains before and after a long run. If the scans showed that endorphins were being produced and were attaching themselves to areas of the brain involved with mood, that would be direct evidence for the endorphin hypothesis. And if the runners, who were not told what the study was looking for, also reported mood changes whose intensity correlated with the amount of endorphins produced, that would be another clincher for the argument.

Dr. Boecker and colleagues recruited 10 distance runners and told them they were studying opioid receptors in the brain. But the runners did not realize that the investigators were studying the release of endorphins and the runner's high. The athletes had a PET scan before and after a two-hour run. They also took a standard psychological test that indicated their mood before and after running.

The data showed that, indeed, endorphins were produced during running and were attaching themselves to areas of the brain associated with emotions, in particular the limbic and prefrontal areas.

The limbic and prefrontal areas, Dr. Boecker said, are activated when people are involved in romantic love affairs or, he said, "when you hear music that gives you a chill of euphoria, like Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3." The greater the euphoria the runners reported, the more endorphins in their brain.

"Some people have these really extreme experiences with very long or intensive training," said Dr. Boecker, a casual runner and cyclist, who said he feels completely relaxed and his head is clearer after a run.

That was also what happened to the study subjects, he said: "You could really see the difference after two hours of running. You could see it in their faces."

In a follow-up study, Dr. Boecker is investigating if running affects pain perception. "There are studies that showed enhanced pain tolerance in runners," he said. "You have to give higher pain stimuli before they say, 'O.K., this hurts.' "

And, he said, there are stories of runners who had stress fractures, even heart attacks, and kept on running.

Dr. Boecker and his colleagues have recruited 20 marathon runners and a similar number of nonathletes and are studying the perception of pain after a run, and whether there are related changes in brain scans. He is also having the subjects walk to see whether the effects, if any, are because of the intensity of the exercise.

The nonathletes can help investigators assess whether untrained people experience the same effects. Maybe one reason some people love intense exercise and others do not is that some respond with a runner's high or changed pain perception.

Annie might question that. She loves to run, but wonders why. But her husband tells her that the look on her face when she is running is just blissful. So maybe even she gets a runner's high.

Distance: 6.48 km
Time: 41 minutes 50 seconds
Pace: 6 mins 27 secs/ km (really need to up this to 5 mins, but running is so sporadic....)
Temperature: 27 C
Humidity: 54%
Mileage on Nikes: 224.68 km

The iPod is good. I was beginning to think it was a bad buy after the itunes dependency (and that is one clunky software) but the run made up for it. Good sound quality, and it's so light, you don't feel it!

Oh also, got into HGSE! Again!

Muaha.
Ahem.
alhamdulilAllah

Distance: 3.2 km
Time: 21 mins 9 seconds
Pace: 6 min 36 secs/km
Temp: 23 C
Humidity:78%
Mileage on Nikes: 218.2 km

Damn but I need a new mp3 player

Comfy run after ages. I am worried about the pain in my right knee though.

Distance: 4.22 km
Time: 28 minutes 59 second
Average Pace: 6 minutes 52 seconds / km
Best Pace: 4 minutes 31 seconds / km
Temperature: 22 C
Humidity: 22%
Track: Nisar Shaheed
Mileage on Air Max:215 km

Distance: 2 km
Time: 14 minutes

I will take when I can get.

Very comfortable 5 km run after quite a while.
Distance: 5.07 km
Time: 31 minutes 1 second
Average Pace: 6 minutes 7 seconds / km
Best Pace: 4 minutes 12 seconds / km
Temperature: 26 C
Humidity: 57%
Track: Nisar Shaheed
Mileage on Air Max:208.8 km



Date: Oct 17, 2007
Distance: 3.48 km
Time: 18 minutes 28 second
Average Pace: 5 minutes 19 seconds / km
Track: Nisar Shaheed
Mileage on Air Max: