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.

Sunny Smiles

Having spent large parts of this blog moaning about how hard my training is and generally whingeing I'm happy to report that today I had one of those great mornings where everything felt great and my hour and a half run was almost a pleasure. We got back from our skiing holiday last night, and the signs of Spring are everywhere - lambs and calves in all the paddocks and even our grape vine has its first bud. It was a warm morning to be running, but luckily enough cloud and a bit of a breeze stopped it being too hot, it's a good reminder that the conditions for the Hamilton half will be very different from Huntly which was a very cold day which ended with torrential rain. Bumped into G & J just before Scotsman's valley so had a 5 minute chat break which I'm sure helped. Both my hamstrings feeling a little tight so must remember to get some stretching done over the weekend, apart from that nothing to report in terms of sore bits. Last 5 minutes was hard work but all in all a darn good start to my running week.

Stormy Weather

After being rained off the mountain on Tuesday and not even getting up there yesterday we woke to another wet and windy day and no surprise to find everything closed again. I couldn’t put off the inevitable any longer and retrieved my running gear from the bottom of my case and headed out into the wind and rain. The good news was that everything seems to be in working order, nothing hurting and despite a harsh head wind on the way out I had a fairly civilised hour of running (the tail wind coming home was most welcome!). Keeping my fingers crossed that the wind will drop off later today so we can get a final day of skiing in tomorrow before heading home.

No Business Like Snow Business

A beautiful sunny start to the morning promised another glorious day like yesterday up the mountain, but by 10am the cloud had come over and it got progressively gloomier with intermittent patches of whiteout. Having had a full day of skiing yesterday my legs were tired so by lunch time I was in no mood to fight it out in rubbish conditions so by 1pm we called it a day and headed back down. Actually it was much clearer in the lower mountain – although trying to snow when we left. Faced with a free afternoon I looked at my running gear (the deal was that any day it was too bad to ski I would fit a run in ), but having skied half a day my calves and quads were in no mood for it. J fancied 9 holes of golf so I offered my services as caddy and had a good hour and a half of walking instead. Got back in time for our spa booking – although a call from C next door offering gin and tonics nearly swayed us, but we figured a spa first then a gin and tonic. Isn’t it nice to be on holiday?

Timing Woes

Disaster has struck, my trusty Speedo watch has met with a watery end. This is no ordinary watch, it has a built in strap free heart rate monitor, dual time functionality, lap and split timer functionality and a rubberized strap which doesn't perish however much you sweat. I'm gutted. J bought it for me several years ago (she had to import it from the UK) and it has seen me through duathalons, more runs than I can imagine, cycle events and overly long meetings where I just wanted to keep an eye on my heart rate to make sure I wasn't being bored to death. A quick squizz on the internet seems to confirm my fear that Speedo aren't making them any more either. So now I need to find a replacement - if anyone out there can recommend a good, strapless hrm watch please let me know. On the running front last night's outing with the marathon clinic still seemed unnecessarily hard, but I got through an hour long run and although my achilles and knee were both still a bit grumbly neither seemed any the worse for it this morning. Today was speed training on the treadmill - yay!!! I actually eased it off a bit this week by not doing the fast bits at such a high pace as I have been, but kept everything else the same so it was still more than enough of a workout.

Full of Beans

I don't know if it was having a rest day yesterday, or the fact that the sun is shining and Spring is in the air, but I'm full of beans this morning. Even having to try and motivate teenage hockey players at 7am didn't dampen my enthusiasm.
A quick stock take after my day off, left achilles a little sore and tight (must stretch calf muscles!), right hamstring tight (more stretching there too) and my right knee is just a bit niggly but nothing that can't be safely ignored. So, all ready for my run with the marathon clinic crew tonight then - hopefully my energy levels will still be as high then as they are now, although the SH girls have a hockey game right before again so I'll no doubt expend a fair bit as nervous energy - semi finals are looming!