I'm baaaack!

Hey everybody!

Good news - I've recovered from my ankle injury and am BACK with a vengeance!

I've actually been off on holiday too and had high hopes for sprucing up the blog while I had some spare time, but alas I have been too busy running around on my FUNCTIONAL ankle!  :D

Seriously - I've been like a kid at Christmas. I normally rack up about 20km a week, but in the past seven days I have done 35! The reasons for this are twofold: firstly, fixed ankle (yay!); and secondly, I've been up in Aberdeen so I've been using my runs to do a little bit of exploring. 

In my opinion, Aberdeen is quite underrated and in fact a really beautiful city - it was quite nice to get lost somewhere different for a change. Oh yes, there was a lot of getting lost. My personal favourite was when I ran out of pavement and got stuck up to my knees in grass while wearing my short-shorts...  still it all adds to the fun, eh?

However, due to lack of kit (I refuse to cart free weights about in my rucksack), I've been kind of neglecting my muscle toning. I intend to be on it again next week though, and I might through a little bit of yoga in too... we'll see. 

Anyway, that's been me for the past week... how are things with you? ;)

My ankle is guffed

I knew it was going to happen eventually. 

On Thursday morning, during my interval training, I went over on my ankle. I thought I had got away with it at first, but that evening the swelling started and it began to hurt whenever I put substantial weight on it.

It wasn't too bad, just a twinge really, but when I got up to do my Friday morning jaunt I made it to the end of the street before I realised that running on it probably wouldn't be a good idea. 

So I'm now sporting this particularly snazzy number:

I've co-ordinated with my toenails and everything!

Don't get me wrong, it isn't a serious injury by any stretch of the imagination. But this isn't the first time I have suffered an ankle injury and so I know the consequences of not treating it with extreme caution. 

The last time I guffed my ankle I was only three weeks into my running training. I was full of excitement and enthusiasm for my new routine, and I was shocked by how frustrating I found it to be stopped in my tracks at such an early stage. I sat and cried as I iced my foot night after night - not because it was particularly painful, but because I felt that I had lost control of my body's health just weeks after I felt I had grasped it. 

So I started to look for alternatives to keep the momentum going. I went on a powerwalk - but that just made things worse. So I signed up to a gym and spent every second morning on the exercise bikes - a great way to get in some cardio without putting any pressure on my ankle at all. 

Needless to say, it all worked out well in the end - I was off my feet for about three weeks before I started up again pretty much where I left off. But those three weeks were slow and frustrating, and I would hate to suffer a repeat of that.

So I am keeping off my foot as much as I can. I'm on the bikes again, which personally bore me to tears but I would much rather do that than just sit on my backside and feel sorry for myself. 

I don't think my ankle is as bad this time around, so hopefully I won't be off my feet for quite as long but it is still pretty gutting. Ho hum. I'll keep you posted.

I'm on Twitter!

Okay so this isn't really news - I have been on Twitter for years, but I have decided that a lot of the followers of my regular personal account won't want to hear about my vague ramblings about running, so I have decided to break off my fitness updates and put them into their own feed. Think of it as a kind of digital multiple personality disorder.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you @littlemissmfc.


I'm using it to collate the most interesting health stories, connect with other health fanatics like myself and of course, publicise my blog posts. So if that sounds like the kind of thing you're into, then go ahead and give it a cheeky follow!

I'm still trying to get my head around the HUGE health and fitness community though. Who should I follow? Do you have a health Twitter feed? If so, let me know in the comments!

UPDATE! Still not logging!

Hi Guys,

So a couple of weeks a go I decided to stop using MyFitnessPal. We had been in a pretty involved relationship for over a year, but the time was right to break it off. It wasn't the site's fault: it was me. My goals have changed since I started using it and I couldn't see myself using it forever.

Anyway. I have already talked at great length about why I have stopped using it, so I'm not going to bore you with that again. Instead, I thought I would let you know how I'm getting on and reveal if there is indeed a life beyond logging everything you eat.

Here's the good news: I'm still not logging, and my weight has been steady! Hooray! Okay, well, not quite. I gained a pound or two at the beginning, and I tend to bounce around that 10st 2lb mark now, but to be honest I don't grudge that little bit of extra weight. Of course, if the scale goes up any higher (10st 5lb is my "alarm bell" weight) then I will do something about it, but at the moment I'm fairly happy where I am.

I seem to have replaced logging with routine. Instead of writing down everything I eat, I follow a rigid pattern that I know won't exceed my calorie limit (and believe me, I have done plenty of logging to know what exceeds my calorie limit and what doesn't). I'm a bit more lax on weekends and holidays, but I think the routine below comes in under my calorie limit, so I have a little bit of leeway to indulge every so often.

But anyway. A normal day for me goes like this:

6am (Pre-breakfast)
A small glass of smoothie or a handful of fruit

9am (Actual breakfast)
A large bowl of cornflakes with semi-skimmed milk and a cup of coffee

11am (Mid morning snack)
A piece of fruit, e.g. an orange, pear, peach or plum

12.30pm (Lunch)
A small bowl of soup with brown bread and a banana

3.00pm (Mid afternoon snack)
A small serving of dried fruit and/or nuts and a cup of tea

6.00pm (Evening snack)
A small snack e.g. a pot of yoghurt, a piece of fruit, a couple of oatcakes or crispbread

8.00pm (Dinner)
A normal sized meal with a sweet treat afterwards (e.g. rice pudding or gasp! ice cream)

9.30pm (Late evening snack)
A cereal bar or something similar - but only if I am feeling peckish

I know I know, it looks quite regimented, but this routine is only a baby step in the right direction towards eating normally. I look forward to the day that I can just eat what I need without thinking about it, but until that day comes I think that this is a good halfway house between normality and logging.

But just in case I was wondering if I had done the right thing... a couple of days ago I logged for the day. Just to see what would happen. I ate pretty much to the above routine and found that after I had my evening meal, I was still about 500 kcals under. So what did I do? I gorged on 500 kcals worth of biscuits. Was I hungry? No. But just KNOWING I had those calories left to spend made me reach for the biscuit tin. So yeah, I think I have definitely made the right decision.

And just like that, I have made another step towards a normal, healthy life. Feeling kind of chuffed with myself right now. Onwards and upwards!

Podcast Review: NHS Couch to 5K +

They're finally here: The NHS Couch to 5k + podcasts! You have no idea how excited I was when I realised that this had been released.

I was so excited, that as soon as I got home, I downloaded the podcast, laced up my trainers and headed straight outside.

There was one problem though - I had just devoured this:

Picture taken by my lovely friend Mhairi!

So I was feeling slightly full and, dare I say it, nauseous. How was I supposed to know that the series was going to come out on the same day as my work's special afternoon tea?!

But that wasn't going to stop me! I had a podcast to review!

The NHS Couch to 5k + podcasts are a follow up series to the AWESOME Couch to 5k plan, which is aimed at getting absolute novices up and running for 30 minutes non stop in only 9 weeks.

But what do you do when those 9 weeks are over? Well, that's where Couch to 5k + comes in. The series is a set of three podcasts, each one aimed to help you achieve a different goal. So whether you want to increase your mileage or your speed, or whether you just want a halfway house before moving on to something else, these podcasts will give you a helping hand.

The podcasts were made in conjunction with AudioFuel, who specialise in making training plans based on music with a specific bpm (beats per minute). As a result, pace is a very prominent feature in these podcasts.

So, you have a choice of three sessions: Stepping Stone, Stamina and Speed. Unlike the original Couch to 5k plan, you can do the podcasts in whatever order you want. So, as I want to increase my pace for my upcoming 10k races, I decided to go for the 'Speed' session.

The Speed podcast is an interval training session, which is a great way to train if you want to increase your pace. The structure was pretty simple: a five minute warm up walk, followed by a warm up run at 155 bpm, followed by six 60 second intervals at 160 bpm, with 60 seconds of 150 bpm recovery in between. The whole thing clocks in at about 26 minutes, so it's shorter to what the seasoned Couch to 5k graduate is used to, but it is still designed to pose a bit of a challenge.

The main difficulty for me was getting used to the structure of the music: you have to synchronise your strides to the beat. As I've been setting my own pace pretty much since I began running, it was a little bit awkward at first having my own rhythm dictated to me. However, I got used to it and about 10 minutes in I felt pretty good.

The thing is, I completed the Couch to 5k plan over a year ago (oh my, time flies when you're having fun) and since then I have been covering about 20k a week, completed two half marathons and broke the 10k under an hour. So, I'm sorry to say, I may have overshot a little bit. For me, the pace of the workout didn't get me into the satisfying sweat I normally aim for. Besides the odd urge to throw up some rogue cake, I didn't find the session particularly challenging.

But as I said, I have been training hard for a good while now so I think I might have been a little bit worried if I had found it tough. Don't get me wrong, I still got a decent workout, and it was really nice to be under the guidance of Laura again. However, I think this series is aimed at more recent graduates of the Couch to 5k plan, or those who have been going at a bit more of a steady pace since their graduation.

In any case, they are still worth a bash. They're free after all, so you have nothing at all to lose!

Get them here from the iTunes store.