Bloody hell. So Monday is my practical assessment for my level 3 personal training award, Wednesday I have a ‘training in alternative environments’ workshop all day and Thursday I have two exams, one in Exercise and Fitness Knowledge, the other in Nutrition.

And it feels as though I’m drowning in it all.

For Monday’s assessment, I have to give a mock session to a ‘body’, a lad called Jonathan from the course that includes a host of advanced resistance techniques in the gym.

And so I ran to the local Virgin Active and made myself do John’s whole session so I knew I could teach it properly. The problem is, the advanced techniques see you do some pretty crazy things, four different exercises, one after the other with no reps and heavy weights.

By the time I’d finished, I was ready to be sick – and then had to run home on top of it… As I said

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Miles today: 3.01
Target: 1071
Miles to date: 1,487.30
Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Today’s run

Run wise, I went up to the Virgin Active gym in Streatham and back, with a workout in the middle. When I say workout, I mean trying out a host of advanced resistance training techniques that I have to prove I can teach a week tomorrow for my assessment.

Miles today: 3.2
Target: 1053
Miles to date: 1,469.28
Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Today’s run

For those of you who have missed any related posts, the First Rule of Running Club was devised by my pal David. The First Rule of Running Club dictates that you must got for a number two before going on a run… the theory is that if you don’t, you’ll want to half way through the run.

Well I followed the first rule and I still wanted to go half way through the run – which made for a particularly uncomfortable second half of the run.

The strange pain in the bottom of my left foot was also playing on my mind. With every step, I get a small stabbing pain coming up in the area just before my toes… it’s not unbearable but not pleasant either.

So this evening, I decided to venture back to my running heroine, Lillian, the sports maseuse at the Virgin Active gym in Streatham. She gave me a good going over, releasing some of the pressure on my aching muscles and in particular the adductors (the ones on the inside of your thigh). But she also found what is wrong with my foot – apparently, I’ve a little bit of tendonitis and I could feel it clicking as she tried to massage it away.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a map and details of the run

Miles today: 5
Target: 972
Miles to date: 1,330.75

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

It’s a 24 hour cross country race for teams of up to eight over a 10km course. Basically, you always have to have one of your team  running the course over the 24 hours. So you could do, say 20km (or two laps), let someone else go out for a lap or two, followed by someone else and when you have recovered, you can go again.

It’s all part of this new drive by Adidas for their new running community testadidas.co.uk and invited participants get the following:

-          Free entry to TR24 to be part of the adidas team

-          Free pair of Swoop 2 trail shoes

-          Free running kit (tops and bottoms)

-          Free catering / refreshments on the day

-          Free massages

Unfortunately, I cant take part as it is the weekend of Laura’s sister’s wedding but the team publicising the event are looking for willing participants.

As it’s part of the ‘test adidas’ trial if you fancy a go, you would also have to take part in the community with some online reviews of kit and the like, it’s at www.testadidas.co.uk which goes live this week.

If you want to sign up, drop a line to

Atheer [at] wildfirecompany.com

From a running perspective, I did another five miler today, heading out on what has now become a familiar route to the Virgin Active gym and back.

I’ve my first practical assessment in gym instructing this weekend which will get me the first part of my PT diploma and allow me to start training people in gyms if I wish so it was good to get some practice time in on equipment that will be used in the exam.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a map and details of the run

Miles today: 5
Target: 909
Miles to date: 1,219.63

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

I’ve been feeling a little sluggish since I upped the mileage to five miles a day over the last two weeks and have been trying to drop my pace to turn the runs into recovery ones, rather than proper pace ones.

This morning, I again split a five miler with a session at the local Virgin Active which gives me chance to practice on some of the resistance machines that I need to brush up on for my practical gym instructor exam on the PT course which is in a couple of week’s time.

I normally wear little gym gloves when doing weights as my hands tend to callous quite easily (it comes from having soft jobs for the last 20 years I think) but I couldnt wear them this morning.

Last night, I made some pasta and as I was emptying it into a sieve, a load of the hot water splashed all over my hand. Despite sleeping – at Laura’s insistence – with my hand in a bucket of water all night, I’ve still got a couple of nasty blisters on two fingers this morning…

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 5
Target: 876
Miles to date: 1,155.81

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

I did allow myself a bit of a lie in though – ha – starting my first run of the week, a 5 miler,  at 7am. It was hot and sticky and, because I had my course over the weekend, it felt like it should be a Sunday until I saw the hundreds of cars clogging up Streatham High Road.

I split the run up with a session at the gym and spent an hour there going over all the resistance machines in anticipation of my next assessment on the course.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 5
Target: 867
Miles to date: 1,141.61

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

With the weather so warm, I’ve decided on gym days I’m going to split my run: run up to the gym, do some weights and run back…. Normally that would be about three miles but today I decided to take a long route and up things to a five miler… There could be a reason for this – well there is in my head – but I’m not sure whether I should go public with it yet – I’ll see how this week goes.

I got the Virgin Active in Streatham just after opening and so it was pretty quiet, apart from the chap I sometimes see working out who seems to know everyone in the gym and greets them all with a massive guffaw and has a little bit of chit chat. Today – and I’m not sure why – it was Bond films.

There was also another girl there who I sometimes see. A young black lady, lithe as you like – I mean there is not an ounce of extra body fat on her and although she exercises alone, she clearly “beasts” herself to the extreme.

Today I found out why. She was speaking to loud bloke and I only caught part of the conversation but she is about to compete in something (not sure what) abroad next week. The guy was asking her how it was going and she seemed quite confident.

She also said she couldn’t wait to finish so she could have a bag of chips. “Really?” replied loud bloke. “Not a banana or something?” “Nah,” she said. “A bag of chips. I’ve not had one for two years.”

That, friends, is dedication.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and details of the run

Miles today: 5
Target: 843
Miles to date: 1,103.31

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

I keep an old pair of iPhone headphones at the gym that go into a socket on the treadmill and allow me to watch whatever is on one of the screens while I’m running. There was a slight problem today though… the phones were shorting and I got a couple of short, sharp zaps in the right ear before I abandoned the idea. The phones are now abandoned in a nearby bin.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for details of the run

Miles today: 3.11
Target: 804
Miles to date: 1,054.50

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Normally when I run outdoors, the GPS links to a satellite and that tracks my run. Obviously if I’m on a treadmill, it can’t do this as it looks to the GPS as though I’m running static and it shows me going nowhere.

The Foot Pod acts as a pedometer, counting the number of strides I take and has been calibrated with me running outdoors so its’ pretty accurate when it comes to measuring how far I’ve ran as it takes into account my stride length.

The thing is, for the Foot Pod to work, I need to turn the GPS off otherwise the two methods of measuring the run send conflicting information to the watch and hence the record goes all out of whack – which is what happened today.

I’m pretty sure I turned the GPS off before I started running and the watch showed that it had detected the Foot Pod, so set off on the treadmill, turned my headphones to the Andrew Marr show that was on one of the TVs and settled into a rhythm watching first Ed Milliband announce how we would lead the Labour party if he gets the job and then David Cameron say how he’s going to lead the country now he’s got the job.

After half an hour I looked at the treadmill, saw I’d done 5.5km (3.4 miles) and stopped…. only to look at the watch and see that it had only recorded one mile as the GPS was still turned on and it was overriding the Foot Pod.

Clearly, I’d done more than three miles but was almost ready to go outside and run another two to prove I’d really done three for the day. Thankfully, when I downloaded the details to Garmin Connect (that hosts all my runs) I noticed there is a ‘cadence’ value that shows how many times my left leg (the one with the Food Pod) hit the floor during the course of the run.

This showed I’d averaged 84 steps a minute with my left, ie 168 steps a minute with both. I reckon each of my running strides is around 3.5ft long, ie I was covering 588ft a minute! As I ran for 30 minutes, I covered 17,640ft, which is almost 3.4miles… and verifies was the treadmill was saying! Phew! I’ll add just three miles to my totals to be safe rather than sorry.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for details of the day’s run

Miles today: 3
Target: 717
Miles to date: 953.07

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Great day for an early run though: bright, sunny, not too hot, not too many people around. Exactly what it would have been great to have the bank holiday like instead of pissing it down… sometimes nothing changes

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a route map and full details of the day’s run

Miles today: 3
Target: 681
Miles to date: 897.64

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here