Lämmchen's Workout Thread

[tango]

It's hard to manage sometimes, so layers don't always work. If my fingers or feet even start to feel cold, it's hard to stop it. There are times when I've gone to bed and worn heavy slipper socks on my feet and 3 hours later under heavy blankets my feet are still ice cold. It's awful.

I don't know how relevant this is as a comparison, what I've sometimes found is that too many layers can be counterproductive, especially indoors - the same insulation that stops me cooling down also stops me warming up. If I struggle to get warm I sit with my back against a radiator, or lie down across one of our larger radiators. You can get bags of thermal stuff designed to be put in the microwave and heated up - kind of like a hot water bottle but filled with solid rather than liquid. I had one years ago but very seldom used it, so gave it to my dad because he often woke in the night with cramps when he got cold. My wife has one that she uses when she needs it.

 

[Lamb]

I don't know how relevant this is as a comparison, what I've sometimes found is that too many layers can be counterproductive, especially indoors - the same insulation that stops me cooling down also stops me warming up. If I struggle to get warm I sit with my back against a radiator, or lie down across one of our larger radiators. You can get bags of thermal stuff designed to be put in the microwave and heated up - kind of like a hot water bottle but filled with solid rather than liquid. I had one years ago but very seldom used it, so gave it to my dad because he often woke in the night with cramps when he got cold. My wife has one that she uses when she needs it.

Thanks for the tips. Have you ever heard "chilled to the bone"? With Raynaud's it isn't just the surface that's cold, I'm cold to the bone which is why it's difficult to warm up once it starts. I have an electric blanket, but don't like using it when I go to bed, but sometimes in the evening I'll use it. It just gets my top skin hot and the inside is still cold.

What really keeps me warm is when my thyroid levels are too much. Isn't that weird?

 

[tango]

Thanks for the tips. Have you ever heard "chilled to the bone"? With Raynaud's it isn't just the surface that's cold, I'm cold to the bone which is why it's difficult to warm up once it starts. I have an electric blanket, but don't like using it when I go to bed, but sometimes in the evening I'll use it. It just gets my top skin hot and the inside is still cold.

What really keeps me warm is when my thyroid levels are too much. Isn't that weird?

Sometimes I feel like I'm cold on the inside, regardless of what the temperature is like. For me often I find it's a strange thing - if my feet are cold then I feel cold, so keeping my feet off the floor can help. Curiously my legs very seldom get cold even if I'm outside in the snow. If my hands get cold indoors I'll often feel disproportionately cold, but it's easy to rest my hands on the radiator for a while. In that sort of situation I'll try to gently warm up because it's not helpful for me if I get warm enough I want to back away from the heat, before the warmth has had chance to work its way through me.

Once I've warmed up I'm usually OK, unless I keep doing whatever made me cold (e.g. walking barefoot on a cold floor). I don't know if that would be different for you.

 

[Lamb]

Sometimes I feel like I'm cold on the inside, regardless of what the temperature is like. For me often I find it's a strange thing - if my feet are cold then I feel cold, so keeping my feet off the floor can help. Curiously my legs very seldom get cold even if I'm outside in the snow. If my hands get cold indoors I'll often feel disproportionately cold, but it's easy to rest my hands on the radiator for a while. In that sort of situation I'll try to gently warm up because it's not helpful for me if I get warm enough I want to back away from the heat, before the warmth has had chance to work its way through me.

Once I've warmed up I'm usually OK, unless I keep doing whatever made me cold (e.g. walking barefoot on a cold floor). I don't know if that would be different for you.

Warding off the cold feeling in the first place is what helps me the most. I wear extra thick socks in the winter and I have fingerless gloves to wear (so I can keep typing)_and that helps a bit. I swear we'll have to move someplace warm once my husband retires.

 

[tango]

Warding off the cold feeling in the first place is what helps me the most. I wear extra thick socks in the winter and I have fingerless gloves to wear (so I can keep typing)_and that helps a bit. I swear we'll have to move someplace warm once my husband retires.

That makes sense. When my feet get really cold it's usually because I'm walking on the cold floor. If I put warm socks on and wear something to keep my feet off the floor that doesn't always help because they are already cold. If I warm them up by some other means (usually the radiator) then all I need is to keep them off the floor and I'm good. If there are drafts that can sap my heat away, which is just one reason why I've spent so much time and effort eliminating drafts from my house.

 

[tango]

My suggested workout was two threshold intervals. I didn't feel like doing that because it was quite chilly outside so just went for a free run without specific intervals being set up ahead of time. And I ended up clocking a faster workout than the suggested one, holding an average pace on a par with the suggested interval pace for most of the route. Not personal best territory, probably about 30 seconds per mile slower, but a decent pace given I'd originally thought I'd be going a fair bit slower.

 

[Lamb]

I've been eating tons of Christmas cookies for a month now. I am afraid to weigh myself, but I tried on some summer shorts that I had finally gotten into again this past summer...and they still fit! Cool I'm still struggling to get enough energy to complete my 10,000 daily steps though and I admit that my new goal for now is only 7,500.

 

[tango]

I've also been eating more than usual lately (Christmas and all that) and exercising somewhat less (it's cold outside, so I'm tending to walk rather than run more often and do the shorter loops) but so far it seems nothing has gone out of control.

Weight alone is only useful up to a point. In the past I've found that when I started exercising people said I'd lost weight but the scale said I was exactly the same weight. But my clothes were looser, so presumably I shed fat and laid down more muscle meaning I was the same weight but physically smaller.

 

[tango]

Today's suggestion was a threshold level workout. Because it's been cold I haven't done much running lately so it was good to blow off some cobwebs and run a bit harder than usual.

I maintained a pace about 20s/mile faster than the suggested pace. Originally I'd thought I might take aim at my 5k personal best but with a mile or so to go I realised my average pace wasn't fast enough and I wouldn't be able to claw back the time. So I accepted a time a little slower than my PB but still faster than my PB of a few months ago.

Curiously my legs don't feel like they want to fall off, which is good.

 

[tango]

Having done a fast run on Christmas Eve I decided to do a longer run on Christmas Day while the food was in the oven. Any form of running after a heavy dinner was just not going to happen. I cut the route a little shorter than originally planned so I'd be back in time to help switch everything around in the oven, so ended up a little under 10 miles.

Then yesterday it rained all day and today it's set to rain all day, and my suggested workouts for the last two days have been "rest", so I'll do some relatively easy walking in the hall. If I can find a gym that offers sensible day passes I might look into using a treadmill so I can maintain harder workouts when the weather is bad, it's just that when the weather is bad I probably won't feel like driving out to the gym in it any more than I'll feel like running in it.

 

[tango]

A gentle run yesterday, I actually managed to keep my speed and pulse down enough that my watch considered it a base run. Then today it was cold and wet, my suggested workout was "recovery" (i.e. even slower, and short) so I did some walking indoors.

 

[Lamb]

I was thinking of starting up those indoor walking videos again like I used to do. But I ran out of energy yesterday.

 

[tango]

Today's suggested workout is threshold intervals. It's very cold outside, so I may end up doing something much less intense.

 

[tango]

First decent run in a few days because weather. The suggested workout was threshold intervals, which I ended up doing harder than suggested so the last one was pretty draining. I thought I was going to set a new mile PB during the first interval but then the hills arrived and put paid to that, even if I didn't miss it by a whole lot.

Tomorrow afternoon it's meant to be nasty again, so I might not get to run again for a few more days.

 

[Lamb]

Sometimes you need to change things up and use different muscles. So this year I started working out to some line dance videos! Here are a couple I did this morning. The Footloose one is fast and I can feel it in my legs!

 

[tango]

Not much running lately because the weather has been the kind of cold that feels like it sticks to me and it's difficult to layer appropriately so I don't freeze for the first mile before I'm warmed up but then also don't overheat once I start pumping out body heat. The last couple of days I walked a local 10k route with a focus on pushing my walking speed, and got some numbers I haven't achieved in a while.

 

[tango]

First hard run of the year, a little over 10k of speed repeats. It turned out to be my hardest workout in many months, although how much of that was due to running hard and how much was due to losing some of my running form over the last few weeks (meaning the same speed means more work until I get that form back) isn't clear.

It's good to get back to doing hard anaerobic work. At the end of one of my speed repeat workouts my legs usually ache pretty well, which is a good sign. If I finish an anaerobic workout and my legs don't hate me it means I didn't go at it hard enough.

 

[Lamb]

I've seen the line dance to Gives Me Shivers quite a few times and it looked complicated...but it really isn't!! I had fun learning it tonight and got 3 thousand steps in doing it. Well, learning it and then practicing it to various videos.

 

[tango]

My legs still don't like me after Monday's workout. The last couple of days have been walks rather than runs. I'm hoping to run again tomorrow, although speed repeats might wait until next week.

 

[tango]

Yesterday I did a gentle-ish 5 mile run. Today I wanted to tick off a challenge to run a 15k this month and also a challenge to run a 5k this weekend. So I did a gentle-ish 10 mile run and ticked off both challenges with one workout. Surprisingly my legs don't hate me right now, but I don't know how they will be in the morning.