Nike SheRunsAKL – Exercise Diary, Week 1

This is partly for everyone who might have wanted to join the SheRunsAKL Nike 10 km challenge and hasn’t been able to do so yet, or is still thinking about it, and partly for my own satisfaction of seeing everything I’ve done the previous week laid out in front of me. So here it is, Week 1 of the SheRunsAKL challenge. If you’re wanting to get back into running, I reckon this is a pretty good way to start. Click below for more

Monday, Day 1 : After work, at 5:30 PM I headed down to Britomart to join the rest of the SheRunsAKL runners. Instead of a run though, fitness guru/babe/Nike trainer Kirsti Godso took us through a NTC (Nike Training Club) ‘get strong’ workout, to educate us about functional fitness. These are the kind of workouts I enjoy, working your legs and upper body strength – not that I’m any good at them, but I like them. At the end of the night, we were given a She Runs AKL tote bag and were able to choose between two training programmes : ‘Finish the race’ or ‘Set a new Personal Best’, since I’ve never run much more than 3km before, I chose the ‘Finish the race’ programme, and collected my ‘Count me in’ badge to pin on my tote, as proof I was there for the first week. We get a new badge each time we attend a training preparation session for the challenge.

Tuesday, Day 2 : My training bible told me that today was the day I would kick off with an ‘easy’ 3 km run. Easy, lol. I completed it without stopping and that’s all that matters haha. I was lucky enough to get given a Nike Sportswatch GPS last year, and when I plugged it in to my laptop to log my run, it informed me that my last run before tonights was in Sept 2013. Oops.

Wednesday, Day 3 : Warm up with a 800 m run, then a 3km ‘tempo’ run, cool down with an 800 m run. I had to ask what a ‘tempo’ run was, and the answer I got was this : “a tempo run is simply a run with a bit of pace – a bit quicker than you would normally run at, but not a sprint! You want to be pushing yourself though, so no jogging.” Crap. This was by far the most challenging exercise of the whole week. I kept trying to tell myself that the faster I went, the quicker I’d reach the end, but my body wasn’t listening, it wanted to stop, and lie on the road, and cry, or something. It was bloody hard. But I must have been doing it right, cos I ended up clocking up my fastest 1km. I didn’t do myself any favours by deciding to run at 330 in the afternoon, while the sun was still blazing hot, with hardly any shade to run under. But I knew if I didn’t do it straight after work (I started work at 5 AM, so finish early) I would likely not do it all. When I found a street with lots of shade, I just ran up and down that same little part of the street until I clocked up my last km hahaha. For the 800 m cool down, I walked about half of that, I was SO wasted after the tempo run.

Thursday, Day 4 : My thighs and legs are killing me today after yesterdays run. On the exercise menu is The NTC Get Toned Beginner Tighten Up Program – you’ll need to download the Nike Training Club App from Google Play or iTunes if you want to do any of these. This one is a 45 minute workout that involves a bunch of squats & lunges, high knee runs, push ups and ab work. I was about 30 minutes into it when the app crashed & lost my progress, so you’ll just have to believe me when I say I did it It doesn’t let you skip through the exercises either, so I screenshot the workout summary and finished off the last few exercises with a timer.

Friday, Day 5 : Stretch / Rest day, wooooohooooo because legs are still sore as.

Saturday, Day 6 : 6 km run Geez, they step it up on you pretty quick ay? For this run, I drove out to Mission Bay just before 10 AM, and though it was later than I’d originally planned to run, and really sunny, running right next to the water means you get a nice, cool breeze pretty much the whole run. I ran from Mission Bay towards the city for about 3.5km and then back towards my car for the last 2.5 km – I timed it this way so that I could get a nice 500m warm down when I walked back to the car. Compared to the ‘tempo’ run, the 6km was a piece of piss. I definitely benefited from a good nights rest. Also, I wanted to make sure I paced myself well so that I wasn’t wasted at the end of the the first 3 km, and perhaps I paced myself a little too well haha, but overall I was pretty stoked with how well I did this run. It took me just under 40 mins to complete 6km, which I know is pretty slow, but that’s OK, I can only go up from here, right? I’ll try beat this time next week.

Sunday, Day 7 : Rest, enjoying my day off. Legs not so sore anymore.

I don’t know if this was helpful at all for you, but I decided from the start that I’d follow the Nike SheRunsAKL training guide by the letter, because I want to run 10 km with confidence at the end of all this. One thing that I haven’t been very strict on is my eating, though I’ve found I did just naturally eat a lot better on the days when I was working out. So feel free to give this week of training a go yourself, or come join us all tomorrow at Britomart at 530 PM

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