Running to Think

Hi my measuring freaks,
if there is anyone who does not like to measure her or his own progress, please raise your hand. Thing is that you get a boost when you have the feeling to be close to your target. And that, my friends, can happen only if you can measure it.

The easiest  and most well know method is measuring your weight with a scale. The cheap ones that you find in supermarkets are in my opinion not very accurate. Once you get a decent one there is a way to define your ideal weight by measuring your height and use the formula for BMI (body mass index) = weight / height². A healthy BMI should be in the range 18-25 but of course this number should be taken with care because it doesn't take into account body composition. Namely, a fat person can have the same BMI than a body builder.

Below you can find a BMI chart, provided you would like to know if you are in the green zone:

Table 1: BMI chart

More accurate scales for medical usage such as those that you can find in pharmacies like wellnescentra and fitnesscentra can do a great job. One brand I suggest is Tanita.
It uses BIA (Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis) technology, which sends a safe, low-level electrical signal from footplate and hand electrodes through the body. BIA is quickly calculated and it is also non-invasive. This is considered one of the most reliable ways to measure body composition, even clinically comparable to DEXA (dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry) and hydrostatic (underwater) weighing. These methods usually return your weight, fat percentage, fat mass, fat free mass, total body water, muscle mass, bone mass to provide a very complete profile of your body. 

Those scales are also quite expensive, one more reason to keep reading.
If you can have access to one of those scales in your city or gym, fine. Otherwise you can use other cheaper techniques which go under the term of kinathropometry.

Kinanthropometry is an emerging scientific specialization concerned with the application of measurement to appraise human size, shape, proportion, composition, maturation and gross function. It is a basic discipline for problem-solving in matters related to growth, exercise, performance and of course nutrition.


The measuring tools you need are:
1) a scale
2) a calibre (to measure skinfolds)
3) a measuring tape

Figure 2: Calibre

Figure 3: Skinfolds to measure

You got all, now what? What should you measure, where, how and what formula should you use?

Let's get busy.

Biometry

They are a lot of things you can measure such as height, weight, the circumference of the upper arm, waist, hip, calf, thigh and some other stuff but those are not really important. The skinfolds can be measured with a calibre.
In Figure 3 you can see the correct places that you should measure. Measure each twice or more to make sure you did it well, then take the average of those measurements.

Body Density (BD)

The measures at hand will allow you to calculate your fat percentage. There are 3 different formulae to do that. I will explain the two ones that I consider as the most accurate. These formulae adapt quite well according to your age, gender and the amount of skinfolds you measured.

1) Jackson- Pollock (3 site skinfold formula)

2) Durnin - Womersley (age 20-29)

Fat Percentage

Running long distance takes a consistent part of my life.  When the target of the week is mileage above 130 km, it is not possible to train every day less than 2 hours. To this I add shower time, post-workout relaxation, eating. Then the worst part, going to work. Taking the train, then commute by bike for about 40 minutes. Another hour and half is gone.
Sometimes I think that they really should have made 28-hour days, at least.
It turns out that running has the priority on almost everything else. We are runners after all. Usually this means sacrificing time for girlfriend, friends and yourself.
An effective way I have been experimenting so far is to run to work, which allows me to easily save those two missing hours of the day.
Preamble: I need 30 min train and 40 min bike (or 25 min bus) to get to the office and as much to get back home.

For the commute, a preparation is needed though.
First I had to set a laptop at the office. This laptop is a replica of the one at home, namely it synchronises all apps and data that I change from home to the office. Running with a laptop is absolutely discouraged, even in the case of those computers provided with SSD disks.
Leaving a laptop at the office and use internet services is the solution.

An internet service that allows sharing data with others and more importantly with your own devices is copy.com. In addition, Gmail, Twitter and Strava are device-agnostic services and they provide the functionality I need independently from the laptop at my disposal.

An important device, however is the running backpack. There are plenty out there. These ones are probably the best.  I personally use a Salomon trail 10L without hydration pack. It easily gives room to keys, mobile phone, a couple of rechargers and some money. More than enough for a daily running-to-work session.

What is really important is the clothing strategy. I carry with me a spare t-shirt. But the rest has been placed beforehand in the office. Cool working places usually have showers. Make sure your working place is cool enough ;)

Last but not least, your legs. Make sure they are capable of doing it, every day.

Run happy. Work smart.

October means fall, trees losing their leaves, the sky getting greyish (a bit more here in Belgium) and people getting more lazy. Not us.
October for us has just one meaning: running more and getting ready for the winter season, in one word, actually two, half-marathon of Bruxelles. Due to the race-of-the-year, scheduled on October 25th, I decided to run it at a gentle pace and be Caroline's bodyguard in the first part. I ran with her for the first 5 km at the pace of 5':09" per km, a pretty fast one for her. I had no reason to mentally push her as I saw she was enjoying the run, measuring herself in the first three hilly tunnels at the beginning of the race and projecting her condition on the long distance of 21.1 km.
At km 5, I got her approval to go, crashed my lips on hers as a mere sign of good luck, and gave free rein to my legs, which were waiting for the signal. Unchained, they galloped me towards the finish line, which was only 16 km far. I passed a number of runners and put myself (and my backpack) in front of 3500 people in about 12 km.
I enjoyed it, a lot. No pain, no stress, no rush, at the moderate pace of 4':05" per km.

I hereby thank Bernard for the beautiful image and post-production.

The best came in the last 3 km when I decided to taste the delicious flavour of strain and increase the pace to 3':29" per km. A joy you can appreciate in this picture of me almost approaching the finish line.
I had no bib number with me. We need none in the forest. Caroline did. Therefore she could get her diploma and the official race time of 1h:55':54".
Not bad at all as her first time.

Dear ladies (and gentlemen),
we all know how hard the battle of losing weight is and our attempts to shape the body to what we consider ideal. Big thighs, flappy bellies, hanging arms... all things we don't like and we wish to change by means of exercises specifically designed to destroy that garbage (and us), sometimes in concert with a well-balanced diet. 
To begin with, we claim to target a certain body shape. Bad news is that genetics will dictate the uncontrollable. Good news is that we do have the power to change a few things that might actually contribute to our overall satisfaction. 
Today I want to be more specific and show you different types of bodies that we usually have to deal with. I'm sure you already heard about hourglass shape, apple shape and so on. 


But what you want is probably some technicality. And there you are the categories (somatotypes) into which we are most likely:

Endomorphs – “fat retainers”
Mesomorphs – “athletic”
Ectomorphs – “skinny”




Actually i have some kind of bad news. One thing we cannot do is choosing where we want to loose weight. Detect and target a specific spot to be reduced. Just fiction.
Remember how the layers of an onion are? For most people, fat acts exactly like that. It doesn’t just disappear from a specific place, but rather it comes off layer by layer from the whole body. However, some people have localised areas where fat loss (and of course gain) is more pronounced, and while fat is still shed from all over the body, the loss is proportionately different in different areas. 

What I experienced was a mix of both the conditions. When I am losing weight, that occurs everywhere with more emphasis on thighs and breast. Exactly! My breast!! 
A nightmare for every woman. 
Why does that happen? Well, during the initial stages of weight loss, women tend to lose fat in their breast, which is mainly fat tissue, indeed. Those with the shape of a pear tend to carry excessive body fat in their buttocks, hips and thighs as well. 
So, what can we do to prevent this terrifying situation? 
Not so many people know that the most important thing for those women to do is to keep their cardiovascular (cardio) activity to a minimum. Specifically to a level that reaps health benefits without excessive loss of fat, while emphasising resistance (weight) training in the effort to increase the size of the muscles that lie underneath the breasts.
While it is not guaranteed to keep the fat of the breast, your breast can very well be perked up by strengthening the main muscle group of the chest supporting them. Think of the pectoralis major and minor.
What I personally suggest is phrased in a kind of motto "eating clean, training dirty", especially those area's you don't really like of yourself. Then try to accept the body you have. I know it's not easy but, at the end everyone is unique and beautiful in his/her own way.
My body changed when i started to eat clean.  But let me be honest here: we live only once so have that piece of chocolate staring at you, on the desk, begging you to bite it, once in a while. 
After all, that will cost you 3-4 times/week of cardio and strengthening exercises.



Love,
Caroline