Carol Levesque's Blog

I ran my longest run yesterday. I ran just over 20 miles. It was slow & painful. I ran slow at the beginning so my time was really slow (4 hours & 18 minutes & 28 seconds!), but I believe it allowed me to finish the 20 mi. Don’t think I would have been able to finish it if I had run my regular 7 minutes/km.

Here is the mapped out run from Runkeeper:

I have now hit my peak distance & will not start to taper so that I can recover to run the actual marathon on September 26th.

A reminder that I will be running for the Assaulted Women’s Helpline.

Your donation will directly support the services of the crisis line:
- AWHL offers a toll free and TTY telephone crisis line to all women in Ontario who have experienced abuse. This life-saving service allows women to reach out for help, free of charge, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, assured of their anonymity and confidentiality.
- AWHL provides crisis counselling, emotional support, information and referrals in up to 154 languages
- Your donation directly supports the services of the crisis line to make sure no calls go unanswered.

Sponsor me here: http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=893006

I use the application iFitness on my iPhone 3G. I use it to keep track of my workouts as well as the reps & sets that I did per workout. In it is a great runner’s workout. I have found the same exercises in other runner’s workouts so I would like to share it with you.

Quads – Barbell Squat
Hamstrings -Dead lift
Quads – Sumo Squat
Calves – Calf Press
Lower Back – Good Morning
Obliques – Dumbbell Side Bend
Bicep – Concentration Curls
Chest – Dumbbell Pull over

I’ve also added:
Abdominals – Captain’s Chair

This week I started with 2 sets & 8 reps for upper body and 10 reps for lower body. I’m going to increase the reps next week to 10 to 12 & then the week after I will go to 12 & 15. I might possibly go to 3 sets for my upper body but since there are so many leg exercises I will stick with 2 sets for the legs.

I’ve been following Jenny Hadfield’s marathon training on the ScotiaBank Training pages. I’ve been finding it difficult to run at my 65-75% of max heart rate as I felt it was too slow.

I was using the 220 – Age = Maximum heart rate, which was 184. That left me with:
65% – 119.6
75% – 138
80% – 147.2

I did some more research and found another way to calculate it.
1st I need my actual maximum heart rate. askcoachjenny @ Runner’s World mentions how to determine your maximum heart rate. I tried it out today and found my maximum to be 181.
I found my resting heart rate by placing the heart rate monitor while sleeping & grabbed the average. I did this 3 times & found it to be 68.6

Here is the formula to determine your heart rate zones:

[Max Heart Rate - Resting HR x training zone + Resting HR]

65% – [181 - 68.6 * 0.65 + 68.6] = 141.6
75% – [181 - 68.6 * 0.75 + 68.6] = 152.9
80% – [181 - 68.6 * 0.8 + 68.6] = 158.5

These heart rates seem more reasonable to me & will be using these for my marathon training.

I have officially signed up for the ScotiaBank Toronto Waterfront Marathon.

I will be raising money for the Assaulted Women’s Hotline. You can sponsor me here. This is my 3rd time running for this charity. In 2007 I ran a 5 k at this event for AWHL. Last year I ran the half-marathon & now this year I am running a full marathon.

I haven’t signed up yet, but my plan is to train for the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon on September 26th, 2010.

I will be running 4 days a week. 2 days out of the week I will be crosstraining. On my crosstraining days I will be doing weights. I will be using the STWN marathon training program by Jenny Hadfield.

Just waiting for the charity I run for to get their stuff set up. Then I will be signing up. Hopefully the end of this week or next.

Here’s my 1st run:

I will be doing weights tomorrow & Saturday. Here is my workout for the next 6 to 8 weeks.

Quads – BOSU Ball Squats
Hamstring – Lying leg curl
Calves – Lever standing calf raise
Back - Cable Seated Row
Deltoid (side) - Lever Lateral Raise
Chest – BOSU Ball Push-ups
Biceps & Hip Abduction – Bicep Curl Bosu Ball Exercises
Triceps – Lying Tricep Extension
Abs – Medicine Ball Leg raises

Just got back from running in the Sporting Life 10k.
I greatly improved upon my time from last year. I believe I was about 58:59 last year & now this year I was 54:43.

Here are my runkeeper results:

The finish line improved from last year as well. Previously they had 15,000 people all crowded into a very small section & pour into Fort York. This year it was the near the opening of the Prince’s Gates near the CNE. A lot more room to move around & I didn’t feel like cattle!

Update:
I placed 4715 out of approximately 15000 people, for female age: 35-39 I was 216 out of 960, and for all women I placed 1590 out of 6684.

Here are the results for the Waterloo Half-Marathon for 2010.

Out of 365 I was 202nd place. Out of 55 women from the age of 30-39 I came in 28th place. And for all women I was 74 out of 201.

w00t!!!!

I ran the Waterloo half-marathon this morning. Very happy with my time. 2 hours, 6 minutes & 37 seconds (unofficial).

Runkeeper results:

Didn’t sleep much last night. Went to bed around 10pm but didn’t fall asleep until after after 1am. Woke up again around 4:30am & then fell asleep & then woke up again around 6am. Didn’t feel too bad though.

It rained hard during the run, but luckily not the whole run. The 1st 7 kms was good, some rain & not much wind, but at around 7km the wind picked up & it got cold. The wind died down around @ 10km & so did the rain. Was only spitting until about 15km when the wind & cold started again. There were many hills & I was able to do quite well with those. That was due to my training & boy was I glad I did hill training.

Here’s a pic of me starting my last 1 km:

Overall it was a great run! I am in some pain. Mostly my lower back & upper hamstring. Took some Motrin, rubbed on some Myoflex & drinking some Crown Royal & Diet Coke. Feeling better now.

Woke up early this morning to go for a 10 km run. Now I’m not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination but I’m starting to enjoy my Thursday morning runs. Feels good to get that out of the way and the weather was beautiful today.

I went to Hero Burger for lunch & ate a 6 oz burger, fries & vanilla milkshake. Pretty much wasted my 10 k run. Oh well, it was good, but I’ll never get all of that food again. Probably just stick to the burger & go only once a month.

Went to the YMCA after work and did Day 3 of my new workout. My legs were still sore from the straight leg deadlifts I did on Tuesday & from the 10 k run this morning. But I made sure I stretched after my workout. (Which I recommend you do after every workout!).

Today was Day 2 of my new workout program. I did the pull muscle group.

Back (Lats – Assisted Underhand Pull-Up
Hamstrings – Barbell Straight Leg Deadlift
Back (General) – Cable Standing Row
Deltoid (Side) – Dumbbell Lateral Raise
Biceps – Cable Curl
Abdominal – Leg Lifts
Obliques – Exercise Ball Oblique Twists

Same as yesterday, I start out with 3 sets & 10 repetitions for arms & 12 for legs. 2nd week I will add more repetitions (12 for arm & 15 for legs). 3rd week I add another set but go back to 10/12 reps. 4th week I stay with the 4 sets and go up to the 12/15 reps.

My quads were quite stiff from doing barbell squats the day before. I also did hills today as part of my training for a half-marathon in April. It was my last day of hills and I’m glad. They suck. My legs get so sore for at least 2 days & my Thursday runs tend to be slow.

Going to take a bath with some epsom salts