A long catch up post

Firstly, I'd like to thank everyone for their well wishes after my recent announcement.

The fortnight since that last post has been a testing but happy time. The training has been uneventful but solid.

After a couple of months of training at a much slower pace, I've decided that I might be better off training at a pace about halfway between the slower pace I have been training at and the faster pace I was training at before.

My times haven't been improving much at all, and I have just been naturally creeping up in pace over the last few weeks, and I've felt like that has helped, so I think I might go with it.

So for the last two weeks the midweek long run has been at a little under 6:00 pace (and 9K in distance), and the other midweek run has just been about 6:05 pace (and about 6.7K in distance).

Last weekend was a really good one. I ran the Coolrunning 5K Challenge on the Saturday. I opted for the 25 minutes group, a gang of four. We stuck pretty close together for the first K, and then as official pacer (i.e. the one with the Garmin I informed the group that we were going too damn fast (4:40). The two ladies kept the pace of, but I knew that would be a fast track to Chundertown for me, so I stuck with the other bloke, and we ran through the next 3K in about 15:17. I was talking to the guy (who's name I have forgotten) when I was quite rightly chided by the passing Blue Dog for being able to talk at 4K, so we picked up the pace for another 4:40 in the final K to finish with 24:37, my quickest time this year.

I jogged back to the start a hell of a lot quicker than I usually do, (at about 5:37 pace), and then DJ joined me for the customary breakfast at Grind where we had the pleasure of hearing about Uncle Dave's exploits in NT.

On Sunday I got out for a 16.67K run around the Parramatta River. This is an old favourite, and I had a lot of fun, but took it pretty slow, so I felt strong the entire way.

The hill sessions have been increasing in intensity. On Thursday I did 5 climbs of the 650m hill at about 4:50 pace. By the end of this session I was well and truly spent.

Friday saw my return to the pool. For someone who's job is concerned with numeric data analysis I can be a complete dickhead with numbers sometimes. I had it in my head that I should be able to do a few 2 minute 100s and then move back to a more leisurely pace, so after a 200m warm up, I set off at a quickish pace to do my first 100. At the end of it I felt like I was about to barf up a lungand looked down at my watch to see how m,uch rest I had before my next effort. It said 2 seconds, and I said "no way", and took a long breather.

I did a couple 2:30 100s and then settled into 6 x 150m efforts, each taking 4 minutes. This was a little difficult to achieve as they had squashed the lap swimmers into 3 lanes, and despite each being clearly marked "slow" "medium and "fast", each lane had a real slowcoach in it.

Anyway, I got through them and it was a good session.

The Garmin has died. It wont charge, or talk to the PC, so I have sent it off for repair. I think I need some time not getting my speed fed to me so that I can learn to run by feel again anyway.

Saturday morning was the first chance I had got since the last post to have a run with Bop. We wore our running gear to where we wath Em play netball, and did two laps around the whole park, which is about 2K. The first lap was basically Fartlek with a bit of walking, the second was jogging with a bit of walking.

This (Sunday) morning we also got out for a 4K run before the long run. There was less heavy effort at the start this time, and still a few walk breaks. After the run with Bop I went out for another hour around Homebush Bay trying to run up and down as many hills as I could find. I'd estimate the pace to be about 6:15 or so, but since much of the run was spent exploring new terrain and I've got no Garmin, I have no real idea how long it was. I've worn the Skins since, but my legs have pulled up quite bashed up.

As I said, much of the run was exploration, and I'm going to have more fun on these routes in the future. The mangroves offer many permutations of various tracks that I'm starting to really enjoy.

I'll train conservatively for the next week. C2S next week, and while I'm still a fat pud, the form is starting to return. I reckon if I don't net 80 minutes I won't have put in.