Tuesday am I managed to fit in a swim session before work a quick visit to baker st fitness first with a gentle warmup on the treadmill, some leg rolls and then into the pool for 30mins of front crawl…

Wednesday is Serpentine running day and it was HOT! Setting off to do the 3 park, sun glasses were determinately at the ready today! We set off with the 8-8:30 pack and as usual went off too fast I think we got through the first in 745 and second in 750, sadly I couldn’t maintain this pace and gradually I got slower. I think the final mile came in at 8:15ish which wasn’t a surprise. By this point I was pretty dehydrated and my mouth was very salty. We still managed to average an 8min/mi pace but just not sustain consistency.

Thursday morning I met up with my colleague at Old St for a little jog up to work. We had worked out the route was completely straight and assuming we started off in the right direction there was no chance of getting lost. After about half a mile I was starting to doubt whether we had indeed gone off the opposite way but fortunately not! Quite a refreshing pace this morning which was nice, also normally two runs back to back is normally an issue for me but today was fine.

Not sure what the weekend has in store for me, but we shall see.

N

Rest day tomorrow which is cool, think I may target the hills for Saturdays short run although plans may change with that and Sundays long run may have to be moved to Sat because of what day it is…

Till next time

N

The schedule required the 3M to be covered at approx 8:15/M as I write this blog my brain has kicked in and I’m starting to wonder whether I actually ran fast enough (I hope I did). I set off at 15km/h and throughout the 4.6km I did not drop below 14km/h. Was that fast enough? (Goes off to get paper and do maths…) Oh good, as expected, much faster than the required 12km/h – good good I guess that makes sense as RW define it as ‘brisk’ hopefully my changing it to a fast isn’t an issue!

That’s my 3 midweek runs done, at the weekend I have a slow jog in prep for a ‘race’ style event. Apparently by now I should be able to do a sub 47min 10k and tomorrow I will plot out my route and give it a whirl. I think this is going to be ambitious but who knows, I think in the summer I got a 10k to sub 46 so I know I can do it, it is just whether my body is ready for it yet. That said, I have booked in a session to see Chris at the Sports Clinic on Saturday which should hopefully see away the last knots and twinges I have in my leg from skiing!

Till next time…

Anyway not much to report, treadmill run, 40 mins or so 6.4km pre work session followed by a quick steam then done. I’m not really sure what to do about tomorrows run, the ‘schedule’ has me down to do 9M over 86 mins however this seems to be regressing when it comes to distance so I’m going to adhere to the pace they recommend but extend it to about 14 miles or that of the W6 schedule (2hr 15mins). Not sure what route I will do but to be safe I intend a bit of a loop bringing me back to near the flat at around 10/11M just in case! Will blog tomorrow with an update, hopefully be out on the roads by 9ish.

As an aside I follow Liz Yelling on Twitter and notice she was involved in a podcast which I listened to this morning, apart from the odd sound issues which I’ll ignore as it’s a first show it has it wasn’t too bad. For all you commuters out there with iPhones and iPods subscribe and have a listen, it may motivate you into doing another run when excuses are being made I hope his flourishes into a nice weekly podcast, see www.marathontalk.com for more info.

As usual, that was too slow for me so I ramped it up a little to about 10.5km but stuck to that for the 4M(6.4km) @ 1% incline. Quite a long time but as I went before work I watched the news and as they have Sky News on in the gym I got a good chuckle at the poor quality setup of that network and also the stupid things that channel will do for entertainment in particular today on the news i saw the following:

Sky News reporter Katie Stallard was forced to spend the night on Dartmoor after getting trapped in the snow. She and her film crew were rescued by a gallant 4×4 driver who towed them to the village of Princeton. (link)

To summarise, Dartmoor was cut off because of the snow, they got a few vehicles moving (mainly 4×4′s then Sky decided to send in their own reporters who then got stuck and are now cut off themselves, all for cutting edge journalism!

Next run – sunday hopefully – Long slow run of 8M according to schedule (subject to change )

Today’s jog wasn’t my first run of the new year, last week on the two Sundays over the Xmas break I tested my body to see whether I still had miles in my legs. I run an identical 13.5mile course with a sub 2hr half mara time which is a bit of a reassurance. Sure I have a long way to go still and I know this based on last year but I’ll be the first to admit I have been lazy since finding out I had a place and was concerned I may struggle a lot more.

The 13miler I found is a fun and interesting route, from my flat I head towards Stratford and then head around the perimeter of the 2012 Olympic Park, it’s amazing to see how far it’s come along and I suspect this route may crop up over the next few months (and years!) as I’m sure each time there will be something new! One day in the daylight I’ll take my camera over there and get some good photos, can’t wait to see the Olympics there as I think it will be amazing.




Anyway, I digress, according to the RW schedule today was to be a 4 mile slow jog (~38min), which was fine. The only issue I really had was trying to get it converted into kms as this is what’s on the treadmill. Turns out I miscalculated and did the first two miles at 11km/h and second at 10.7km/h and still came in too soon at 36 mins. Really need to convert before getting to the gym!

Apparently tomorrow is a ‘rest’ day, will see how I feel and perhaps do as they say and rest! I think sticking to this timetable is going to be a challenge in itself but let’s see whether it helps over last years routine!

On a side note, for all the havensrunners out there who maybe reading, if any of you are Londoners or work in London let me know if you fancy a jog or session one evening as would be good to meet up!

5k later with a slight sweat due to the humidity I was done and guess I could proclaim to running s 5k in Africa!

Having won a hot stone massage in a raffle on day 1 I headed to that at 830 (pic isn’t me!)…that was interesting, to say the least. I have had a few massages over the last few months (mainly sports) thanks to my marathon training but this was very odd. Think I prefer massage hands to hot stones!

Anyway let the holiday continue including the eating far to much due to the 24 hour buffets!!

I already put in a session on the treadmill on Thursday but with the weekend 10k coming up and also having a far from healthy diet this weekend (revolving around alcohol snacks and an Indian) I didn’t really want to skip another run opportunity but Mondays are also spinning days – oh the dilemma! Given the title of this blog I guess you can probably guess what I did!

At 1230 there is a spin class (annoyingly the only lunchtime spin during the week), leaving the office as late as possible to avoid using more lunch break than was really nesc I got to the class to find the instructor was different. John, who has been likened by others to one of the sissor sisters, had been replaced by Emma (I think that’s her name anyway) so I was already slightly off guard – nevermind, I have done her classes before too and I know for certain she is not a mentalist! The session today felt odd, I don’t know whether my Sunday runs loosen my joints a bit hence helping these classes, but today my legs where achy and not for lack of trying I really struggled to be able to find the strength in them to either break to much of a sweat or raise my heartrate. I normally find it difficult to get my heart rate in spinning over 170bpm but today it was a challenge to even break 160bpm. I don’t know why I found it difficult part d me thinks I should go back to basics and read up about the body, I feel perhaps the time spent messing around in biology as a kid was perhaps foolish! anyone know any good books on health, body, muscles etc?

Spin class out of the way I had to still go for a run so after a late finish at work trying to put final touches on a project I went back to the gym for session no 2, the treadmill run. I was not intending on doing anything others than the treadmill and steam room meaning it was to be a relatively short session. 5k ish was decided and like the other day I set the mode to random, which appears to mean hills and racked the speed upto 12km/h and away I went. I didn’t stay at 12 for long, over the next few kms it was to be my base speed.

The program went upto an incline of 8% and over the next few kms i fluttered between 12km-15km, I attempted 14km/h at an incline of 7.8% – that is tough! I did 5kms in 22mins and 6km at just over 26mins. That’s a fast time – I know for certain i couldn’t maintain that pace for 10kms but maybe I can based on that hit 48mins on a good day…oh well, will find out in a few days time if I really push myself!

In the changing room I was deciding what to do, should I do some weight stuff or cardio, as usual cardio won but as it was hot I said to myself I wouldn’t bother with the garmin heart rate monitor as I would put the treadmill on slow and do a light jog…

Over to the treadmill, touch autostart and away I go, speed at 11km/h. It probably took less than 30 seconds for me to stop the machine and change to one of there predefined ‘circuits’ I chose the mode they call random. Speed back to 11km/h I pushed on with this mode. It didn’t take long to get bored at that speed so I push the speed up a bit, and a bit more plus a little bit more. No longer is this a light jog and to make matters harder I was on a setting that appeared to be hills which at there peak had inclines of 6.5. Needless to say an incline of 6.5 alongside a pace of 14km/h+ is a tough challenge. I was working pretty damn hard and it’s a shame I didn’t have my heart rate monitor.

I haven’t done a treadmill run in a bit, it maybe worth heading back and doing an interval track to see if my times are changing. I’d hazzard a guess that they maybe sliding a bit due to the cut back in training I am doing now…that said I felt 14-15km/h easier than I remember in the past so who knows!

So much for a light gym session, to be honest I should know better than that. I struggle to get satisfaction out of the gym if I haven’t pushed myself, and today as ever I did indeed push myself.

Whilst in my hay day when training for the marathon I may have taken this opportunity for a run home but aware that the distance hadn’t been covered for a few months and also the knowledge that if I ran home on one of the strike days I would still have to get back again, I decided this wasn’t an option. Instead I decided that Victoria station was a manageable distance from work at 4/5 Miles depending on the route so I would run there and head back to Laura’s which required an over ground train so all was fine.

It’s funny how my running has subsided over recent months, it was clearly obvious after the morning run (run no 2) that long gone were the days where I could put in multiple runs in a short span and still do fine. I’m not going to lie by run number 4 in 36hs I really struggled. A 6k ish run suddenly was really hard. I think that it may have been a case of lack of energy amongst other things but regardless it was a tough run.

There were certainly some pro’s to these few days above and beyond the general fitness benefits. I added to my knowledge of the geography of London, suddenly I knew where shepherd bush is in relation to Victoria and hence now having done London running for my marathon training I now know my way in a fairly straight line between a number of points of the city! This is a great thing to know, it means that if for some reason I can’t get a tube I am able to realistically determine where I can get to from a number of places in the center and the East.

It has been a tough few days of running and with an iminent run in the Bluewater 10k on Sunday this week has been a lot more intense than I had ever intended, it actually felt like one of the busier Marathon training weeks….odd, i’m not sure whether I enjoyed it or not! Sometimes I wonder why I do it! Then I book another run or read a blog/book about how others have enjoyed some event and i’m applying and hooked all over again…