Another 5K Race Down

I completed the Laurier Loop 5K race yesterday as part of the Homecoming activities for Wilfrid Laurier University. It was to raise money for the MDRC, a research centre for movement disorders.

I completed the 5K (two 2.5 K loops) in a personal best time of 26min 20 seconds (chip time) and a pace of 5:20 min per km. I’m happy about the finish (beat my goal time by almost 2 minutes!) and I’m happy about the personal best and my pace and finishing without injury, but I was almost 30seconds away from a 3rd place medal in my age category! Still… plenty of time to improve and I’m not too far away from a 3rd place time. Perhaps I will find time to train while running after all, instead of just enjoying myself :)

A Look at Windows Live Writer

Just a quick test of the Windows Live Writer software, as I was trying to remove Windows Photo Gallery. The Live Writer blog application is quite an unusual look at blogging. Interesting. It allows me to post entries in a WYSIWYG editor, a far cry from the default Blogger post entry, and more robust than Scribefire, the plug-in for Firefox.

100 Mile Challenge Local Wheat

I know its been a while since my last post. Things are busy, and one of my other blogs has more of a return on investment so to speak, but there are definitely thinking heating up in the fitness and wellness area.

For instance, I started as the instructor for a 5K running clinic last week through the Running Room! Today we are running 3K as part of Tim Horton's Camp Day... so the treats at the end should be great!

Also, my wife and I are going to take part in the 100 Mile Diet Challenge being put on by two local Naturopaths here in town. Really great intro meeting (they had to turn people back at the doors due to limited seating) and there will be a site put up soon where people can post questions.

[edit: the site is now up and you can reach Micheal and Rachel's 100 Mile Challenge blog here ]

For example, did you know it can be difficult to find locally grown and made pasta? Well, now here's an article from the Globe And Mail with the story of two farmers who filled a need: Noodles Fresh From The Farm.

To learn more about the 100 Mile Challenge, read the blog by visiting The Healing Path Center for Natural Medicine.

Running Week 4: 6K down

Just got back from my second run this week. Tonight's 6K was a lot harder than some of the other runs in the past few weeks. Sunday we did 8K for the first time. I was feeling good in the beginning, although at the halfway point I was breathing heavier than I normally do. The 8K end ok, except we got stopped for directions after 7K and that caused a delay in our time! No biggie though, I'm in it for the long haul. We'll be doing a few more 8Ks on the weekends but we will be increasing to 10K in just under two weeks.

So I was sore for the past few days after that 8K. There is a pain in my left foot where I thought the lacing was digging into the top of my foot, so today I altered the lacing to help the problem. Hopefully it worked... I guess I'll find out over the next few days.

Today I started feeling good but it was a busy morning. Then I felt really tired and ot feeling well after work so I slept after dinner for a short nap, then out to the talk before the run. This week was a discussion by the main massage therapist at the local sports medicine clinic on injury avoidance. He's worked with many high-level and Olympic level racers, and the discussion focused around the difference between rookie runners and experienced runners. The difference is that veteran is that veterans are more open to taking advantage of "pre-habilitation". Things like running in a pool, getting regular massage therapy and other tactics that can help minimize pain and improve mobility BEFORE injury strikes. Armed with this knowledge, we can all become veterans now matter how many miles we rack up each week.

PS: Watching Biggest Loser again... man Jillian Michaels looks good in that jacket!

Bishops Ban Reiki

Well in an interesting turn of events, people have reported that the Pope has banned Reiki practice as being "unscientific". Its actually a Council of Bishops.

An articles on Jeff Ollson's blog links to the real article published by the Guardian. Actually, if people actually read the real press release by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops they might get a more balanced understanding of the Bishops position... but its still a crock of poop.

Ok that's personal opinion there.

Reiki is a wonderful therapy option, and in many cases it constitutes the sole spiritual practice for people. Reiki is not of Christian origin (there were stories that its creator, Usui Mikao was a Christian minister or learned from a Christian school, but he wasn't and he didn't). The press release explains that the US branch of the Church doesn't believe Reiki should be a treatment in "Christian institutions". Oh and Usui wasn't a doctor either... I hate when people write that.

We have to be fair here. If we want people to let us have our own beliefs then we have to be willing to let other people have their beliefs. There are certainly Christian reiki practitioners who feel that reiki has no conflict with their belief system. Reiki is of course a different belief system, or more properly a set of beliefs. With reiki (as with everything else) people will hold on to whatever they feel is important to them, and let go of the rest.

Reiki is not a religion, but it is spiritual. I suppose the Council of Bishops feel that their religion should be the only spiritual path of its adherents.

It is unfortunate that the Council of Bishops choose to see reiki in this light. Why can't they see the use of reiki as a gift from God? There are definitely those who believe Jesus healed using Reiki (of course he didn't... the system of Reiki was created in the 1920's but energy healing of course is much older than that).

Of course the spiritual aspects could be removed from Reiki, but its not particularly something I'd be interested in practicing. Or actually maybe it would... I'll blog about reiki and energy healing in the future.

My Reiki teacher first sent an email about this.

For a good resource on Reiki, check out The Reiki Sourcebook by Franz and Bronwen Stein. I also have a small (but soon to grow!) collection of recommended Reiki books at my Amazon Reiki store. If you are interested, you check out my Facebook group I created AGES ago called Non-Fluffy Reiki. BTW: There is only a small number of Reiki books I recommend on my site because there are only a small number of REALLY GOOD reiki books out there.

Resources:
Reiki for Christians

That's another 21K on my shoes

Greetings everyone! I made through another week of running. I have logged a total of 21 Km this week since Sunday. Today after work, but before dinner, my wife and I put in a good 3K to give ourselves a bit of a break.

Actually, some money came in yesterday from income tax returns and some health benefit reimbursement, so I decided to splurge and go out for all you can eat sushi. And we ate too much! We felt pretty rough afterward, but what we ate last night definitely had an impact on our performance today. Note to self... stay away from that much sushi for a long time.

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The good news is we seem to handling the running pretty well. I have a mild fear of over-training but I think we are taking everything in a good stride and not pushing too far. We're still doing 10 and 1's during our 6K runs but next Friday we may attempt to do a straight 3K of solid running.

Last week running Tuesday and Wednesday made for very sore quads on Thursday, but this week the muscle stiffness seemed to be negligible, but we definitely feel more tired. Going to sleep in tomorrow and get lots of rest this weekend.

And by rest, I mean sleeping in Saturday since Sunday at 8:30am we have to run 6Km again :)

Peace and good running to you,
Rick

PS: Just for interest, check out the runner blogs and the article on massage and running at iRun.ca. Ok not just for fun, but I'll explain in a later post ;)

I started a 10K clinic

I started a 10K clinic this week. I've decided I want to blog about it. Therefore I've decided to limit blog posts to once a week.

My wife and I planned to get into running again this spring so we went to the Running Room to sign up. There was a 5K clinic on Friday's but Friday's are pretty busy. The other option was Tuesday... a 10K clinic. We decided to sign for it with a bit of reservation, when were asked if we wanted to take part in a research study through Wilfrid Laurier University. We said sure. They said if you get accepted, they'll pay for your clinic fees and race fees! Woo hoo!

So last week we had our first fitness apprasial and there will be one 4 times over the 10 week training period. The study is to "assess the effectiveness of a regular individualized massage therapy program in diminishing indicies of muscle damage/soreness and training discomfort in novice runners progression toward completion of their first 10km road race". Its a mouthful, but those are the words or a real medical study.

Our first run night was Tuesday: 6km and supposed to be steady run...no 10 and 1's which is the typical Running Room program (in the 5K clinic you build gently up to running 10 minutes and walking for 1 minute as a rest). I gathered a group of people who wanted to run 10 and 1s. You can build to a steady 6k run if you are careful with it but for some people, this was their first clinic!

On Wednesday we ran 5K and we still maintained 10and1s. This was our first time ever running two days in a row. We were supposed to run today as well but due to scheduling we skipped it and run Saturday. Besides I have 1 hour of kung fu (wing chun) on Saturday anyway and my wife has belly-dance class practice Friday and Saturday for a recital on Sunday. Besides... I had a lot of blogging to get done!

Next we'll try running up to 4 times a week. According to the schedule by week 4 we'll actually be running 5 times a week. I'll try and keep you posted on my kilometers per week. During the last clinic I didn't miss any runs and I probably made between 12 - 15 km per week.

So far this week I have completed 11Km in just two days!

We're supposed to also keep track of any aches and pains we feel, and if we do any "therapy" to over come it. Usually I'm sore the second day after running, but even with running two days in a row, the pain was much lower then expected. I had sore quads the day of the second run and the run started being a bit difficult because of it, and the next day I did have trouble walking down stairs because of my quads, but now I am pretty much pain free!

Tomorrow we'll try and get in a slow 3K if we can. Hopefully I can also get some stretching or yoga in as well as kung fu... but the weather should be nice enough to ... grrr! clean up the yard!