After my calf improved to the point where I could work out again, I set myself the goal of working out every day until Christmas. My routine took a little tweaking and did at one stage require a day off due to over training, but I made it.

The object of the exercise was to prove to myself that I could do it. When I was only running, I couldn’t run every day, I needed at least one day off in between to allow my joints a chance to recover. By mixing cardio with weights, I can allow my muscles to recover from weights while doing cardio, and allow my joints to recover from cardio while doing weights.

I’m still not back running yet, my physio tells me I’m about a week away from that, but I’ve been doing Tabata boxing sessions for my HIIT training, and cycling for my steady state cardio.

Very generously, I’m giving myself Christmas Day off working out, but after that it’s every day until New Year. Haven’t had a drink in four weeks tomorrow, and don’t intend to have anything until New Year’s Eve.

No matter how well you prepare for something, it’s often something simple that will come unstuck for you. That’s what happened to me on Saturday afternoon.

Mum rang me up and asked if I was going for a bike ride, I told her that I was and we decided to go together. Since it was bright sunlight and very hot, I put on plenty of sunscreen. The ride itself was great fun, chatting away to Mum and riding for over two hours.

It wasn’t until after the ride I realized the mistake I’d made, you see I’d put on my sunscreen standing up and when wearing cycle shorts, they tend to ride up just a little when you sit down and peddle. Turns out it exposed about 2cm of skin that didn’t have any sunscreen, so I had some very nice burn marks on my legs.

The next simple thing that got me was today during my boxing session. As I was pounding away during a 20 second high intensity interval, the bag suddenly fell you the ground, leaving me a bit stunned as to what just happened. Turns out the hook the bag hangs from had sheared in half, looks like I hit a little harder than I thought.

Popped out and picked up a new, and stronger hook and rehung the bag tonight, hopefully it stays put better than the last one.

In terms of how my workouts have been going, I’ve been quite enjoying them, although my weights sessions either feel really good or make me feel like I’m going to die, but I think I’ve already built up a little extra muscle mass and I’ve gone in one more hole on my belt.

In the seemingly unending quest for new ways to torture and punish my body, I have decided to try out HIIT. It stands for High Intensity Interval Training, and apparently the second “I” is silent, and it’s a highly effective strategy for cardio fitness which requires less time than steady state cardio such as running or cycling.

The general theory is that you work as hard as you possibly can for an interval, then switch to low intensity or rest for an interval, then back to high intensity.

On Sunday I tried a variation on this called the Tabata Method which is working as hard and fast as possible for 20 seconds, followed by a 10 second rest, then repeat for four minutes. My chosen exercise was going to be skipping but my calf isn’t quite up to it so instead I worked the heavy punching bag, throwing as many punches as possible in 20 seconds.

I should point out that there’s a five minute warm up and a two minute cool down either side of the longest four minutes of my life.

The word I continually used to describe this work out was: brutal. Honestly, I thought my arms were going to drop off and at the end of four minutes I was exhausted, and covered in sweat.

Today it’s back to the weights, which have been slightly improved by my personal trainer. I think the current plan is to do two days of weights, followed by a day of HIIT or steady state cardio, then back to the weights. That way I get four weight and three cardio sessions a week.

Here’s a little video to give you an idea of what a Tabata heavy bag session looks like. I may, at a later date, film myself doing much the same thing.

Cycling is an insidious and evil activity. In the past week I’ve gone from “I hate cycling” to “I don’t really like cycling” to “I guess cycling’s alright”. After last weekend’s effort I complained about sore sit bones, and my lovely wife offered to buy me some proper cycling shorts as an early Christmas present, I’ve been wearing running shorts which unsurprisingly don’t work very well.

Today my new shorts turned up today and they are size M for medium and they fit well, possibly a little on the baggy side. I decided to take them for a spin around the airport, a 33km loop, and I have to say they make a huge difference. Today’s ride went quite well, altho slightly slower than Sunday’s effort but overall I’m pleased with it all.

I’ve been doing a bit of weight training lately, which I can already feel the results of but I’m a little cautious of over training right now, so today had to be a cardio day otherwise my arms may have fallen off.

Tomorrow I’m going to hit the weights again, currently aiming for some sort of activity every day until Christmas. Hopefully my calf will be healed by then and I’ll be able to run again.

For those of you who haven’t kept up with me on Twitter or Facebook, I completed the Lake Hood half marathon two weekends ago, achieving my goal of finishing in under two hours, with a time of 1:57:37. Unfortunately, I also tore my calf muscle during the run and have been laid up since.

I spent over a week on crutches, which are a surprisingly good workout, and didn’t really manage to get in my exercise. This week I’ve been walking more freely and managed to get in a couple of ab workouts and did a weight session last night.

My physio gave me permission to attempt cycling yesterday with a couple of caveats. First, take it easy on the calf which means avoid standing up on pedals and second, no hills. Last night I plotted myself a flat 20km bike ride and today I rode it. I have a great iPhone app called RunKeeper that I use to keep track of my bike rides, it uses the GPS to track your activity, and no I don’t listen to music or anything while I ride, my phone stays in my back pocket the whole time.

The ride itself was pretty good, taking just under an hour and burning about 560 calories. I try to be as safety conscious as possible when riding, not running red lights, and keeping a watchful eye on parked cars and other drivers but as usual there was some pretty appalling driving on display.

Also spotted something really odd on Fendalton Road as I went down there the first time. There was a guy in a full karate gi standing as still as a statue on the median strip, now there’s something you don’t see every day!

Calf feels the same after the ride so I think I’ll be doing a bit more cycling, I’m not a huge fan of cycling but it’s a hell of a lot better than doing nothing and can be done while I rehab my calf. Now the question is, do I focus on distance, time or calories burned?

So a week before a half marathon I always run a test of about 17-18km to see how my body will handle the full distance. Honestly, those last 4km are entirely mental and usually by then I’ve got myself into such a good mental zone that I don’t even notice them.

Due to giving myself an extra rest day during the week, this year’s test run come only six days before the half marathon but was once again a success. On these test runs, time is not a factor at all but it can be a good indication of where I’m at in terms of any goals for race day. This year’s goal is the same as last year’s: Break two hours.

The problem spots on my body, opposite knee and ankle, haven’t really acted up which really pleases me, so it’s full steam ahead to Lake Hood on Saturday. I’ve got one last training run this week which will be a lazy 7.5km, last year I tried to cane it on that run and paid for it in the second half, this year I’ll just run at my usual pace.

Next stop: Lake Hood half marathon!

After last weekend’s over indulgence in food and alcohol, I had a particularly hard couple of runs, with my knee and ankle both causing my a bit of pain and my legs feeling like lead as I plodded around my run but now I’m pleased to say I feel I’ve got through it.

I was meant to run yesterday but instead decided to give myself an extra rest day which seems to have really paid off. Today’s run felt really good, despite the heat I managed a good time and feel fine afterwards.

Only two more training runs until the half marathon next weekend, one big one on Sunday and a short one on Wednesday. Wish me luck!

For the past six weeks or so I’ve been reasonably strict with what I’ve been eating and my training. This weekend was a bit of a slip up and I must say I’ve really paid the price for it. My mother-in-law’s partner Mike came to stay with us over the weekend, he’s a really nice guy and always takes us out somewhere nice while he’s with us.

Unfortunately, this means watching what I eat goes a bit out the window, and I’m OK with that, provided it’s a short term thing and I don’t slip back into old habits. So over the weekend I ended up eating too much and sharing a few beers with Mike, something I haven’t done in quite sometime. With the weather being somewhat uncooperative for my Friday run, I missed out on that completely, but got out on Sunday.

Boy did it ever hurt! After just 2km I was seriously contemplating chucking it in at the 7km mark, but I persevered and got thru the full 13.5km. Sure I was slower than usual and my legs just felt like lead the whole was around, but I made it.

I’m also official entered in the Lake Hood half marathon on the 20th of November, less than two weeks away. I’m comfortable with where I am fitness wise, even with yesterday’s struggle. I’m cutting back a little this weeks, aiming for two 10km runs on Tuesday and Thursday, probably early morning ones too, then a long one of 16-18km on Saturday. If I can manage that a week before, then 21km next Saturday should be no problem.