Over the Hump?

Well against all odds I've reached the end of another training week and met my target - after last weekend being a wipeout and missing out on Tuesday night's mc run I didn't think I'd get there, but 4 lunch time runs of an hour got me back on track. Actually looking back it's been a good week as it shows that even when everything goes pear-shaped it's possible to get back on track and meet my targets. I think this was the week where I was ready to jack it in, I didn't think I'd done enough training so far and felt that with only 4 weeks to go I wasn't going to be prepared enough, but now I've got through the week and I'm on target hopefully the next 3 weeks will be mentally a bit easier and I can cruise towards the big day.

Tomato Face

The nice thing about running at lunch time at the moment is that we are getting beautifully sunny spring days which aren't too hot, and it's lovely being out and about and getting a break from my desk. The downside is that I spend the afternoon with a face like a tomato! My schedule is still all over the place this week (due to my continuing dodgy tummy). I didn't make it out the marathon clinic for my group run last night, which means I will have to run Friday to meet this week's target, which is ok but does make the weekend much harder. Finished off today's run by heading out round the outside roads of the Uni and up the hill at Edinburgh Street, it's short but steep - a nice mini cardio workout to finish.

Tuuuuuuueeeeesday

Marathon clinic running day, but first I had to endure the tension of the school hockey semi-final. My girls were playing the team they completely folded against two weeks ago so I was more than a little anxious. Amazingly we won 2-1, it really was amazing as apart from about 15 mins (when we scored the goals) we certainly didn't play any better than last time! Anyway the upshot is we are in the final and all are very excited. Went on to mc for a run afterwards and ended up doing two short runs with an intermission. We ran up to the hospital to visit one of our running mates who had a knee replacement op last week and then complications which landed him in the HDU, so the run included a couple of big hills and 6 flights of stairs. Spent 10 mins visiting and then ran back round the block to base. So did 45 mins in all but that's ok given that I did more than I needed to at the weekend. Still buzzing from the hockey result to be honest.

Rest Day Bonus

Today is non-running day, this technically means I might go to the gym and do some weights, but in reality means I have a day of no exercise. Back at work after our holiday so updated my training graph and discovered that I have less running to do this week than I thought, so my long run on Saturday has earned me some shorter runs towards the end of the week - this is a good thing. Also my new watch arrived - see pic. It's a Bowflex the only brand I could find which had strapless heartrate monitoring which was one of the things I loved about my (now expired) Speedo watch. In fact it has pretty much all of the same functionality as the Speedo but is not quite as nice - the Speedo was red and had a more ergonomic design. I'm chuffed at how quickly it arrived as I had to order it from the US - good work Amazon! Oh, and just out of interest, my blogging hr is 53bpm, this may seem fairly low but is above average for me as I have non-symptomatic bracchycardia, a posh way of saying I have an unusually low heart rate (can be down to 45 when doing nothing) but it doesn't have any medical significance.

A Bit Extra

Slightly re-arranged my training week as BIP's hockey team were short of 7 players for this evening's game and so she needed me to play. So had a shorter run (about 6km) than I would have otherwise and will go longer on Thursday. Felt fine even after yesterday's longer run, although my legs were quite heavy towards the end everything was working fine and I felt good, oooh two days running! Very humid while out running and the forecast rain finally hit in the afternoon, but luckily had stopped again by the time we went out for hockey. The oppo were even shorter of players than us, at least we had the bare 11 but they only had 10 and a couple of injuries meant they were down to 9 a couple of times. So I had very little to do and could take it easy most of the time and not overdo it on the running front, and more importantly stay free of injury myself. Sunday night with a glass of wine and the final series of The Wire on DVD should aid recovery.

Lighter mornings

At last the days are getting longer as Spring approaches, so this morning when I got to the gym at 7am it was already light. More daylight hours at each end of the day makes fitting running in so much easier, I'm just more motivated when it's light outside. Anyway this morning was a super easy 30 mins, I decided to run round campus and throw in Edinburgh Street hill for a bit of hard work, but all in all it was a nice easy start to the day. Feet and ankles were a bit stiff first thing after yesterday's longer run but soon warmed up and didn't give me any trouble. I was trying out a new pair of running socks having been lured by the Shoe Clinic's 'buy 3 pairs get 1 free promotion' which might be a good deal, but it does still feel a little decadent spending over $100 on running socks! Anyway the free pair are Thorlo experia which have padding in all the right places, but are much thinner elsewhere. They seemed fine this morning but as I buy my runners for thicker socks I'm not sure how they'll go on longer runs, maybe I'll just save them for light training.

Some Days are Better than Others

After changing my rest day this week from Monday to Saturday (a polite way of saying I just couldn't get my a into g yesterday!) I was still feeling fairly unmotivated this morning. However, I got myself out there and after a hard first 5 minutes of grumbling and mumbling I settled into it and by the time I hit the half hour mark I was feeling great and inspired to tackle a couple of the smaller hills at the start of Scotsman's valley. At the top of the second and just over 40 mins I bumped into a friend (on her way out for a 30km cycle) so I had a brief recovery chat before turning round and heading home.
Legs feeling ok, and spent the afternoon shifting 70 bales of hay so everything got a good work out in the end.
Looking forward to a quiet night in and some good wine, a great recovery tool.