Burnout

Not of training totally, though.  Just the spin bike.  As good as Josh Taylor is, I miss listening to my music.  Personally I find I only get the best out of my music when it's me on my own with the headphones.  Having it blasting out of the speakers is great in a way but unless I'm literally doing nothing but listening I rarely get into it in the same way.  Live too is brilliant when you know the songs, but new stuff needs some dedicated listening to.  Be it the gym, the bus or best of all a beach baking in the sun but for me it has to be fed directly to my brain via my Sennheisers.*

Anyway, so my want to listen to some music has driven me off the bike in search of new exercise.  I can row but that was out last night as my back is still recovering from pull ups on Wednesday (I have some serious bodywork to do when this CV blast is over).  The exercise bike is just too dull and frankly those sofa seats they have on them make it difficult to sit on longer than 30 mins.  The stairmaster is the devils work.  The cross trainer and eliptical feel funny on my knees, besides being the least masculine bit of equipment invented.  So what do I have left?  Ah, the humble treadmill.  Okay, so it's back on the treadmill.

I'm not a huge fan of treadmills to be honest.  If I'm running at a comfortable pace my legs barely get a stretch so it feels weird.  If I run at a pace to stretch my legs I can't keep it up for long.  Solution?  Stop bitching for a start.  Then get on and do intervals, slowly increasing the heavier time until it my CV system catches up.

So last night, after ten minutes of warm up on the exercise bike, I took to the treadmill.  5 mins quick walking to get me into the movement, ten minutes of steady medium/low running (8kph).  After that, going 4 mins medium (9kph), followed by 1 minute proper run (12k).  I'm then dropping to five mins of quick walking again.  That's one cycle.  Repeat at least twice more.  Cool down by steep incline walking, slowly dropping off the incline.  Done.

So the stage I'm at is a bit rubbish.  10 years ago I ran 2 miles in ten minutes.  In combat boots and fatigues.  ( I did then spend another ten minutes lying on my front lawn in a puddle of my own sweat gasping for air).  Now....well it's there above to be seen.  However, for the next couple of weeks at least I'm going to be doing some running.  I'm going to try and improve bit by bit on the treadmill.  As a student I came back home for the summer, equally pathetic at running.  After two months of being at the gym, mostly focusing on bodybuilding, I was running strong for 40 minutes. Hoping for a similar improvement this time.

Now if anyone can tell me how to stop my feet from getting too worn and blistering during these long runs I'd be much obliged.

Oh, and I did my weigh in last night (pre-gym).  I'll post the stats up here in a few hours, can't do it from here because I need to put the pictures up too....