Most sport and fitness clubs and groups wouldn't be able to function without volunteers like these. Their get-up-and-go helps others stay healthy, make friends, enter competitions and more. Read on to find out what inspires them to make it happen for others.

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Thursday Aug 30, 2007

Full of beans

I'm still loving my training (up early AGAIN today - thanks again, Laura, for your help and instilling some more enthusiasm in me!).  I have noticed, though, that once I've been through a work-out, my body screams for carbs (yes, more than usual).  I'm currently addicted to Sport Beans (Jelly Belly's special sporting sweeties) which boost energy and really aren't as sugary or as unhealthy as you might think - in fact, they're positively good for you.  Problem is, I'm scoffing them at such a rate I won't have any left for the 16th.  And also I fear they might form my staple diet for the next three months.

Posted by Carrie ( 3:30 PM )
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I am not a number

 

Except I am, and I'll be number 6330 on Sunday 16th September.  How exciting!

I'm loving my new work-out regime, which is puzzling but also good.  I even got up early on Tuesday so that I could go to the gym before work.  That's the first time I've done that since last year's Ashes, and then I only went to the gym because I couldn't bear to watch any more of the cricket. Breaking my exercise programme up into chunks keeps me from getting bored, and as Laura promised, spares my poor ruined ankle too much prolonged stress.

I've also got some gorgeous new running shoes courtesy of Puma, and I'm feeling like a proper runner now rather than an interloper. 

Posted by Carrie ( 7:15 AM )
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Sunday Aug 26, 2007

My new work-out regime

Thanks to the extremely nice Laura Williams, I have a brand-new work-out regime.  After a session in the gym, when I pounded the treadmill, galloped along on the cycle, rowed with aplomb and nearly fell off the cross-trainer, she has picked up on a slight problem with my running gait, as my right foot tilts over as I run, which may explain why my right calf gets so painful after exercise.  She assessed my fitness in general as very good, and so to avoid putting too much stress on my dodgy ankle before the day of the race she has suggested that I do 40 minutes of other cardio activity rather than just running.

Here's what I'm doing now.

5 minutes warm-up on the bike

15 minutes cross-trainer working at a difficult intensity (basically I have to judge this on whether I'm struggling)

5 minutes rowing machine at level 8-9 keeping the speed at 30 strokes per minute

10 minutes stepper at varying intensities

10 minutes on the treadmill walking uphill on a gradient of 5% at 5.5kmph for five minutes followed by jogging slowly at 8kmph for five minutes.

By the way, it's THREE WEEKS TODAY that I'll be running!

Posted by Carrie ( 9:45 AM )
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Friday Aug 17, 2007

Geobars and jellybeans

 

Frustrated with the apparently conflicting diet advice that gets thrown at you from all over the place, I spoke to the very lovely Orly Moyal, nutritionist for Higher Nature, to ask her what I should be eating as I train for my run.

I have the additional complication of carrying some truly dreadful genes (and thanks to both sides of my family for that), so I'm supposed to keep a watch on my blood sugar and my weight, though it proves difficult most of the time.

Orly began by reminding me that muscle weighs more than fat, so when you're doing a lot of exercise, weighing oneself on the scales doesn't give you a true indication of how well things are going.

I've been told before to follow a low GI diet (it's all to do with how quickly a food releases sugar into the bloodstream), but Orly introduced me to a progression of that - glycaemic load (which is more to do with the concentration of carbohydrates). So rather than eating lots of wholewheat pasta and basmati rice, fruit and veg are once again A-OK to eat.

She also recommended taking nutritional supplements after exercise to boost my protein intake, and I've begun with Vitabiotics' Jointace range, which contains glutamine to aid muscle-building and growth. Cunningly, it also helps blood sugar balance, so theoretically it should be a winner.

Posted by Carrie ( 1:00 PM )
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Pictures

 

By the way, as promised, a photo of me in the Lake District at the weekend.  Here's me on a bike for the first time in 15 years.  It's not a grimace of fear; it's me laughing. Note the lack of bumps and scrapes, due to the fact I actually managed to stay on the thing.

Posted by Carrie ( 12:00 PM )
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Wednesday Aug 15, 2007

Keep on running

Today's exercise has been a brisk walk from Blackfriars to Southwark, then from Southwark along the South Bank to the Royal Festival Hall, then back again, followed by a 20-minute swim.

I was feeling a bit despondent today because I really am finding the training much more difficult than I expected.  I was also a bit irritated at how stressful my right knee found the uphill climbs in the Lake District, on foot and on wheels.

This being the case, I've made an appointment to go and see Laura Williams on Friday to get some hints and tips - basically make sure I've got the right kit and that the stresses and strains are simply because of my own physical ineptitude, rather than actually doing anything wrong.

I'm trying to keep focused on the end goal - running 5k to raise money for a really good cause that's very dear to my heart.  The Alzheimer's Society have sent me a lovely blue T-shirt to run in, so I need to work hard and not embarrass them in public!  I'm also really chuffed with having raised over £500 so far, with a month to go before the event.  Is it too optimistic to aim for £1,000 now?

Posted by Carrie ( 9:00 AM )
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Monday Aug 13, 2007

Back from holiday

I'm back from the Lake District. Photos will follow, but I have to say that varying my exercise has been quite fun. We went hiking on Friday and mountain biking yesterday, and though my muscles are suffering for it now, it's much more enjoyable than plodding on a treadmill for an hour a day.

I have been a little bit concerned about my aching joints, but I've been advised that it's entirely my own fault for spraining my right ankle so regularly (once every six months or so, like clockwork, for the past 20 years) meaning that my right knee tries to over-compensate for its ineptitude or something.  I have some exercises to try and toughen it up, anyway, and some rather nifty Mentholatum Deep Freeze and Deep Heat patches, so we'll see what happens.

More importantly, though, I've now raised over £500 for the Alzheimer's Society. And I've not even pulled on my running shoes in anger yet...

Posted by Carrie ( 11:00 PM )
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Thursday Aug 09, 2007

My training regime

I am so very diligent about going to the gym.

The problem is, I don't really like it very much.  I try and vary what I do and flit between the treadmill, the bike and the swimming pool, but, let's face it, not going to the gym is much more fun.

So now I HAVE to go to the gym and concentrate properly rather than slamming my headphones on and going into some kind of daydream while staring at the big screens with MTV on.

I can walk for miles and miles, no problem, but getting up to running speed is a bit more tricky.  My knees and ankles, with all the punishment they've taken over the years, simply won't have it.  I've been concentrating on trying to run for a kilometre or two, and it's getting very stressful.

Well, I may be bad at sport, but I'm good at research.  I asked the advice of personal trainer Laura Williams, who told me: "Break up your training with some lower impact work such as the cross trainer, bike and swimming. I think the key thing is to be able to keep working at a steady pace for about an hour to be on the safe side."

So that's what I'm doing now.  20 minutes on the bike, 20 minutes on the treadmill, and 20 minutes in the pool.  In the meantime, I'm off to the Lake District this weekend to do some proper outdoor exercise.  I'll report back soon.

Posted by Carrie ( 9:00 AM )
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Wednesday Aug 08, 2007

Why bother?

I'm entering the Hydro Active Women's challenge to raise money for the Alzheimer's Society.

When I was younger, my half-terms and school holidays would invariably be spent at my maternal grandparents' home.  As grandmothers do, my grandma took great delight in spoiling me and my little sister, but also took the time to teach us practical skills.  I can still bake a mean chocolate cake, serve up a tasty beef casserole, and embroider a tapestry – and more relevantly to my job, I type at 100wpm and am pretty sure I'd never have got anywhere close to that had I not had Grandma's old typewriters to bash out my stories and poems.

Fast-forward 18 years, and my sister and I noticed a problem. We'd gone for lunch with Grandma, and when we'd both ordered milkshakes, she'd ordered a coffee. We were happily drinking from our paper cups through a straw, but she was looking blankly in front of us, as if she didn't know what to do with her hot beverage.  Eventually she tried to put a straw through the lid covering the cup.

Soon after, she admitted that she thought she had a problem with her memory.

Eventually, and after many tears and months of effort on the part of my grandad and my mum, Grandma moved out of her flat and into full-time residential care as her condition deteriorated even further into the mire of Alzheimer's disease.

Grandma died in May 2005. I still miss her – not the often confused, sometimes angry, sometimes frightened shell she became, but the fun, loving, cheerful grandma with whom I spent so many happy hours in my childhood.

So that's why I'm running to raise money for the Alzheimer's Society – so that other families don't have to go through what we all did.

Posted by Carrie ( 11:03 AM )
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The challenge

I love sport. I became a journalist primarily to write about sport. It remains a constant source of pleasure to me that I can sit in an office and watch cricket, football, tennis, athletics, motor-racing and even darts all day without anyone batting an eyelid – because it's my job and they're paying me for it.

However, I've never been a sporty kind of girl in terms of participation.  I have happy memories of hiding in the music room at the age of 15 to avoid doing cross-country, and though I enjoyed kicking a ball around at break-time, I wasn't really the sort to take it seriously enough to join a proper team.

I'm also hideously clumsy. My knees and shins are battered and bruised with the evidence of my inability to walk around unscathed for a day.

All in all, I'm not exactly a lycra-and-trainers kind of woman, more a cake-and-Veronica-Mars kind of woman, and I'm the last person you'd expect to enter the Hydro Active Women's Challenge in Hyde Park on Sunday September 16th.

Posted by Carrie ( 10:59 AM )
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