Something Different

After my non blog about my non run yesterday I headed to the gym today to see if I could find something to do that would cheer me up a bit. They have a new piece of equipment, the Precor AMT 100i which is a combined stair climber and cross trainer. Basically you determine which sort of action you perform depending on how you step and use your arms. I started off with stair climbing which is an up and down leg movement with no arms, and then alternated 5 minute intervals between stair climbing and cross training (which uses forward striding motions and arms). I went for 30 mins and it was a pretty good workout, I was certainly sweating plenty (mmmm, nice image). My heartrate sat between 135 and 150 so not at fast running level but above jogging. Once I'd finished that I did some free weights and abs. There aren't too many free weights I can do with my (still dodgy) shoulder but enough to get by. I seem to be coming down with some sort of cough/chesty thing which is very odd as I don't feel at all unwell, just have this intermittant and very annoying cough which causes a really tight feeling in my chest. I suspect this was partly the problem yesterday. Hopefully it will amount to nothing as I generally fight most bugs off before they settle in.

A Full Set of Stairs

Thursday morning = stair intervals with BIP again. This week we reintroduced the mini hill sprints between sets of stairs and finished with the full long hill, so back up to doing the full thing. Also managed to do the lap round the playing fields at a reasonable speed, so all in all a successful workout. A busy weekend ahead - Dog show at the Highland tattoo in Paeroa on Saturday and marshalling for the blueberry run on Sunday - means I probably won't have time for a run so I'm planning to try and fit one in this evening after work, I'd like to get out for at least an hour and see if I can start getting my longer distance fitness working again. Also means more wear and tear on 'those' shoes too ....

Tuesday Night's MC Run

To be honest I wasn't expecting great things on my Tuesday night run with marathon clinic after Sunday's hard and long (er than expected) run. However it wasn't too bad all in all. We set out as a fairly large group, me, JB2, LJ, Moro, Lego, USAP and a newbie who's name I didn't catch (saving me the trouble of anonymising him!). We headed off towards the Uni (great, just what I need after a hard day of work, running back to work!) and then after heading round the playing fields split up. Lego & newbie headed off one way (Lego had done the Pukekohe half on Sunday so was taking it easy). LJ, Moro and JB2 decided they wanted to head out via Ruakura for a longer run but I wasn't in the mood to make what was turning into an ok run into anything harder, so headed back to the club by myself. Took it fairly easy and had to walk a couple of blocks here and there but in general pretty good. Not sure how/when I'm going to fit in a run this weekend as we're off to Paeroa with the dogs on Saturday and on Sunday I'm on refreshment duty at the blueberry run. Oh, and the really good news of the week is that WHT are starting to wear at the heel and at this rate will need replacing sooner rather than later :-)

Too Hot, Too Far

Next weekend sees the start of the summer series, 3 set of runs organised by running groups in the area at different locations. The first, which is next Sunday, is the Blueberry Run in Ohaupo which is organised by the marathon clinic. So as we have to be on duty for the run, marshalling, running water stands etc. the tradition is to go out a week earlier and do the run ourselves. The really keen (aka crazy) runners go out at about 6am to avoid the heat of the day, which would be a sensible idea except it's 6am!!! On a Sunday!!! The slightly less deranged (me and JB2) headed out at 10am which was a much more civilised hour, but boy oh boy did it get hot! I was planning on doing 10km and JB2 was doing the full 17km. Wonky B had come out in his car to do water stops for us so I decided to run the 17km route with JB2 and then hop into WB's car after 10km. As it happened I got talked into staying after the 10km water stop for another 3km so ended up doing 13km - ugh! I can honestly say that it was a struggle - even the 10km was a struggle. This time last year I did the 17km with ease - well, maybe not with ease, but a darn sight easier than this year's efforts! Maybe by the third run in the series I'll just about manage to drag myself round the 12km! I spent the rest of Sunday seriously overheated and discovered this morning that I still had a face like a  tomato despite copious amounts of sunscreen!
For those of you following the 'shoulder saga' I was back at the physio this morning (ker-ching!) and she is now referring me to a sports physician to arrange a cortisone injection. I will in the meantime be booking in to see a hypnotherapist, witch-doctor and podiatrist (just in case it's a referred pain).

Worth Getting Out of Bed For

Stairs intervals this morning. Despite the fact that I really really didn't want to get out of bed this morning when the alarm went off at 6am (lack of sleep due to humidity and shoulder) I managed to drag myself up and out and along with BIP managed an interval session on the management stairs. It was definitely the best time of day to do it as was relatively cool. Haven't done stairs since the really hard session just before we went on holiday and I'm pleased to report it was a lot easier today. Poor BIP was struggling though as she'd done a serious interval session yesterday morning and had hockey training last night so was too worn out to give it too much oomph. Did 5 sets of stairs (one block at double stride, one block at single) but didn't do the mini hill sprints in between. Finished with the full big hill though, and then a lap of the playing fields to 'cool down'. By the time we'd finished and showered it was already one of those days where the combination of being overheated along with the ambient temperature meant it was virtually impossible to get dry after my shower - damp and red-faced, mmmmm nice start to the working day.

2 In a Row Don't Go

Monday was a mad venture, a speed interval run on the road. It had been a fairly cool (by recent standards) day - and not raining either, so seemed like a good opportunity for some hard work. Needless to say the minute I stepped outside in my running gear the humidity ramped up by about 90% and I was damp and exhausted before I even made it to the end of the drive! Living in a rural area means we have white road edge markers at 50m intervals all along our road which is a useful training aid for intervals. Workout consisted of a 5 min warm up jog, then 5 x intervals of fast running for 100m followed by recovery jog of 100m, then a couple of minutes recovery jogging before a second set of shorter intervals 5 x 50m fast running with 50 m recovery. Then finally another 5 mins of slow jogging to cool down (ha! not much cooling down occurred).
I definitely did some work as my quads were feeling it by Tuesday -- not a good start to mc running day. Tues evening was again very hot and humid, luckily JB2's madness saved me a little as she'd done a mountain race at the weekend and then spent Monday doing a 14 km run followed by a 90 min climb of Mt Te Aroha!! (and people think I'm crazy ...) - needless to say she wasn't in the mood for much of a hard run Tues night so the two of us stuck together and did an hour's easy run (with plenty of walking breaks) which still felt ridiculously hard. Day off training today (yay!) just trying to decide if I'm up to stairs intervals tomorrow - guess I'll see if I can get out of bed early enough first.

Return to the Road

After being confined to a treadmill for the past 10 days whilst on our holidays it was time to bite the bullet and get back out on the road. I had planned to get up and out early on Friday to avoid the hot weather, but my body had other ideas about sleeping in so that went out the window. Instead I had to go out after work when it was still HOT! I wasn't looking forward to getting back into WHT (world's heaviest trainers) - I'd been running in my Nike free runners while overseas (as they're a nice light option to pack and good for walking around in) which was ok on the treadmill but not enough support for longer road runs so it was back to my proper running shoes. Just did a short (30 min) easy run which was ok and I was glad I had been doing some training while away! Yesterday (Saturday) I went out for a long run (1 hour) which was hard work in the heat (even at 9am) and not only did I have the extra weight of WHT to contend with but also had my water belt on (no way I could go an hour in this weather without water). It was ok- ish, definately got easier as my water bottle got emptier! I had a couple of walking breaks on the second half back and it was a slooooow run, but that's ok, glad to have got out and done it before MC next Tuesday. Pouring with rain today, hope it clears up before tomorrow's public holiday when I have a short fast interval run planned - could do with it being a bit cooler though.