13.1 wk 7 Exhausted

Week 7 was a vexing sort of week. The event that shaped it was a return to teaching. It was the kind of week where you deliberately go in early to be nicely organised for the first day back, only to discover that the computer won't log on until break time. The kind where you finish in good time to pick the children up to get to Brownies,  and it takes over an hour to do what is normally 6 miles becaue the road was blocked and I had to turn and go via a town in the opposite direction. The irony is that I could run the normal route in about that time! The end result was that it was the kind of week where you're zonked out on the sofa for the night while the children are still swarming over you. This is not good training.

I didn't do the week day runs, and had to miss circuits due to other plans, so it was looking to be a washout of a werk. I did however squeeze in my long run.

I'd been puzzling over how to fit it in with Brownies bag packing. The answer presented itself spontaneously. Baby woke at 6 for one of his epic feeds, and by 6.45 I was feeling too awake to return to bed, so I ran instead. Being out of the house at 7.15 was a personal triumph in itself. The first half of the run was very quiet. Even the local runners seemed to feel it was too early on a Sunday. I noticed early on that my body felt good and fast, and that I was reaping a benefit from my hectic week; my body was fresh and rested. I ran 9 miles in 90 minutes, a new longest distance, and a mile further than the time I did my fun run in.

It's quite a big confidence booster. I know a race is psychologicaly easier than training runs on my own, and that I'll have a taper down similar to the rest I had, so it feels much more attainable now. Just a few more hard weeks of long runs to polish me off (both meanings applicable). It all seems attainable now...

13.1 wk6 Making Progress

It's been quite a straightforward sort of week. Buggy Babes was on, so that naturally ticked Monday off. Rest days are easy enough to achieve.

Wednesday was my penultimate day of the holidays so I took my 3 year out to a theme park. There's a kind of self powered monorail there that you i have to cycle round. I was on another ride and saw a rugby build type bloke puffing his way round and moaning about the difficulty of it but I decided to give it a go anyway. It was quiet up there,  and we were the only ones on there.  I has to slouch a bit to reach the pedals, but otherwise it was easy enough although a bit of resistance on the bends. As I pedalled back in, the attendant exclaimed, "you were quick!" I explained about the training and we ended up having a good chat about running.

I ended up doing my run at night. The plan said "easy 30 minutes with last 10 at threshold".I decided the easiest way to do that was to flip my routes round and do a long uphill at the end. I rather enjoyed it.

I had plans for Saturday,  so decided to do my 75 min run on Thursday.  It wasn't ideal tim7ng as my legs still felt low on fuel from running the previous night. It turned outbto ve a battle with some walking mixed in. On a positive note, my speed was better than my previous attempt when I also felt low on energy for different reasons.

I have dropped a run from the plan to allow rest days on Friday and Sunday.  Worth it in the grand scheme of things for Saturday was the day of The Big One North...

Most years my friend and I head up to Blackpool for a hedonistic weekend of yoga, pilates, aerobics, dance, HITT, circuits, spinning, zumba... if it's a fitness trend, it's there and being presented by the top people in the industry. Highlights have previously included aerial hoop and aerial yoga. This was our first go at a similar one day event hosted by the same people. So an early start  and trip to the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield,  was followed by 6 hours of pilates, Insanity, Areobics, kettlebells and a stretch class. I bailed out of the 3rd session when I had an energy crash 5 hours after breakfast, so we went to be revived by jacket potatoes before the big rush for lunch. I noticed that the main part of my body whinging was my hips from sideways movements that I've not done in a long time. I noticed little strain on my cardiovascular system, a very pleasing improvement on Blackpool back in March.

I've also been pleased at my tolerable levels of stiffness today. They've eased up with gentle activity through the day. I've resisted the urge to do anything more demanding, hoping to resume business as usual tomorrow.

I'm now halway through the plan.  Let's hope the second half is as successful.

13.1 wk5 Back on track

A better week mainly in the second half. I missed my Sunday long run slot with a daytrip to visit family, and Monday was a bank holiday so my usual Buggy Babes class wasn't running. Tuesday went to plan, that was a rest day! Wednesday involved a random digestive glitch, so not a great idea to expend lots of energy.

I caught up on the long run when the boys were in nursery on Thursday with the 75 min run. I adapted and walked some parts as my energy was low and I could feel the lack of it in my muscles as I hadn't eaten much in 24 hours. I just felt positive doing something on the plan.  I also went exploring, and went down phase 2 of the Greenway for the first time. Its the conversion of a disused railway to a multi use track. This section opened at the start of the year, but is awkward to link to. It's very pleasant for running with views into fields on both sides,  and a level, gritty surface. I achieved my objective of keeping moving for 75 mins, and managed to restore my appetite.

Friday was a nocturnal easy run. I went for 30 mins because of the previous long run, and an intention of going to circuits in the morning. Circuits was a success after a 6  week absence. Its legacy was felt mainly around my shoulders. Not good for painting the downstairs toilet, but of negligible inconvenience to Sunday's long run.

When waiting for paint to dry, you can do much worse than a 60 minure run! I revisited the Greenway and ran its entirety. Access at the top end is via a busy country road that at least has good visibility. At the lower end there's a section along a main road which at least has a pavement. The slow traffic lights provide a crafty recovery from the steep hill! It was another good run, and pleasantly mild.

I'm reaching a turning point this week. The holidays are drawing to a close, so I lose free time just as the runs are getting longer. It's going to take a bit more determination to keep up with the plan.

13.1 wk 4 Fustration

It was a silly mistake,  turning last week's elation at my misty hill run to frustration at a silly injury. The run itself was OK, some tender muscles; it was the gardening that messed my week up.

Over the last 3 years, we've been slowly turning the garden from a sea of gravel and spindly  bushes to what will be a pleasant, pretty flower garden. We're begining to win. The latest phase has been reclaiming a patio corner by digging out an oversized bay tree which hemmed the corner in and isolated it from the garden, and sprucing up the paving and pergola. My knee didn't appreciate standing on a ladder and painting the pergola, and seemed to think the balancing and reaching was some demonic pilates routine. I could feel the area working  but not hurting,  so I continued the gardening while we had a pleasant day. Bags of sand were luged around and dug in to lighten our claggy clay, and bark spread over flower beds.

The following day I hurt in a "how do I get down the stairs?" kind of way. (The solution being a stiff and lopsided one step at a time approach,  feeling somewhat like a fresh zombie). Good job it was a rest day on my plan. Shame the next day turned to a rest day too. The day after I was feeling fairly decent. Good enough to try running in the optimistic hope that working the muscles might ease them out... Wrong! In minutes,  I changed my intention to a brisk walk, which ended up being being cut short quite soon.

For Friday,  I decided that a visit to the swimming pool was a better idea, so went for a 45min swim. I love swimming as in pounding up and down the pool doing length after length. Unfortunately I can't get to laned sessions, and during the holidays,  the regular lanes are removed so the diving pool is avaliable to be ignored,  and the rest of the pool becomes a cattle market of lengthers,  widthers, splashers and standing-waist-deep-in-tepid-water-chatters. I've never appreciated a swimming pool as a social venue. Anyway, the swim was a successful form of exercise, even if I do get angsty about weaving in and out of people to avoid collisions.

Yesterday,  I missed circuits for what is probably the 5th week in a row, mainly because of reclaiming the house from the forces of chaos, two small children and myself, ready for visitors. However,  I stuck to plan with some strength work, and successfully tested my knees with a short 15 min run which went well.

Hopefully the injury has passed.  It felt more muscular than anything slower to heal. I'll go gently for a couple more days to be safe. As much as I want to keep to plan to do well in this half marathon, that's not going to happen if I push too far while training either.

13.1 wk3 Party Time!

Travelling 250 miles for a party weekend isn't a standard feature of most running plans but I think disruption was quite successfully minimised.

The first mitigation technique was swapping the 60 minute run to a nursery day to ensure that fitted in. That was a satisfying run,  extending my previous long run route slightly, and maximising the slopes through the area. I even recieved a patronising applause from a wierd passer by! Unlike my training for the fun run, I managed without walking sections, a sign of progress.  I must admit to a lack  of disappointment at how long it takes the pedestrian lights to crank into action at the top of the really hilly section.

The part that was sacrificed was a 40 min easy run. In my defence that was mitigated hy carrying the one year old up the nearest tor, so that scores an amber code on my plan. Not too bad for being away from home for 3 days.

Now in days gone by, a good party would have included homemade Baileys cheesecake (not suitable for drivers), lots of Twister (clothing voluntary) and lots of medicinal alcohol for the relief of aching, hiked out muscles. We've gone a bit more genteel with age and politely retired to bed at 12.05 just before anyone turned into a pumpkin. There was a mission to clear excess stocks of alcohol from a wedding last year, but I find that 4 years of pregnancy/ feeding babies and nocturnal demands from small children mean that I forget to drink alcohol out of habit. In fact I party better without its soporific effects. A great time was still had by all, grateful for the chance to meet up and relax together,  and a great game of knocking the balloon around the room over the assortment of small children. What this all added up to was the physical and mental ability to be in my running gear and out of the house at 8 am on a Sunday morning.

It was wet. It was cold. It was awesome. I repeated the walk we previously did up to the tor, fortunately a mostly straight line to the summit and back. I may not have been hungover, but Dartmoor was in one of those moods, and visibility was poor. My only companions were sheep, cows and ponies. A shame the cows weren't as keen to scarper off the path as the sheep, they required a bit of delicate maneuvering off the path to gently avoid. The steep section was walked at a brisk pace, but once off the rocks,  I managed to run all the way down. I was always suspicious of those who rose early enough to descend the hills long before we started ascending,  but I found myself at 8.41, exchanging a jaunty "good morning!"with a cyclist with lots of panniers,  glowing with the satisfaction of having completed my activity. Ok, I was also glowing with wind burn, and cold soggy skin. It was certainly invigorating,  and more than a tad bracing, and I loved it!

13.1 wk2

Well there's a novelty, week 2 was a total sucess on the training plan. The days have been jiggled to take advantage of my natural routines, so some things like Buggy Babes naturally fill for cross training. Likewise,  Thursday is a natural rest day between my term time commitments. Having my daytime free at present, I took a trip to the swimming pool as that's a rare treat. Well the chance to swim is, I spend too much time dunking small children in and out of the water at their lessons. I have often wondered if squatting in the water holding 2 stones of child counts as a workout. Saturday turned out to be a rest day. The plan was flexible on rest or cross training,  and I sacrificed my usual circuits class so husband could catch up on his lost sleep from the previous weekend. It probably was the better option for my body which had worked hard and was grumbling a little around  the edges.

The actual running went well. The 30min easy run was familiar territory. Something new was the threshold run. I enjoyed the variation of that. Normally, I run a large loop and adapt the route as I go as my neighbourhood has many flexìble options,  but for the first time, I thought laps of a shorter route would work well to get the slope more consistent. I had a 50 min long run, not new but rusty. There were pauses for practical reasons, but I got away without proper walking,  a sign of progress compared to my fun run training. I varied my route on that heading out of my neighbourhood onto a cycle route.  That means a steep hill to return to my hilltop home! The weather was pleasantly mild and soďden, rather refreshing after the recent spell of heat and humidity.  I liked the contrast of minimal running clothing with the heavily dressed dog walkers!

Week 3 seems ok so far. The challenge will be adapting around a weekend away...

Operation13.1 is go!

Training is underway for October's half marathon, with 11 weeks to go.

The training schedule is on the fridge with a handy highlighter pen and pen nearby to keep track. Week one went well under the circumstances; the circumstances involving a holiday. No runs while away, but while the little people were asleep and under the care of granny, we managed to do a couple of brisk walks in the evenings that we weren't visiting family. I took some running clothes and shoes on the unlikely chance that I might use them which turned out well as my sister in law asked me along to her kettlebells class. That was a good session. I'm familiar with them from my usual circuits class, but it certainly worked my muscles.

I may not have managed all the runs on the schedule, but I did get a long run in. I took advantage of the little people being in nursery to run in the daytime. Unfortunately, I caught the half hour of the day when the sun came out blazing. I'd rather have caught the downpour that was half an hour after my return home! With my running being so erratic/ non-existent in the last two months, I went out with an open mind, and managed 52 minutes. Some of it was walked when the heat got overwhelming, but I'm happy with that.

I've been in sole charge of the little people while my husband has been away doing the three peaks challenge. This has meant a plan B rather than my usual circuits and running combination. Saturday also involved spending most of the day with family, so I'm rather pleased I snuck in a productive session on my somewhat underused exercise bike. I tried using a Tabata timing app which I quite enjoyed. Like most exercise bikes, it's neglected because I find it dull, but the short bursts of exertion made it feel more meaningful. I impressed myself with my home made tablet holder aka two elastic bands.

Today, I headed out to a country park. I had hoped for a brisk walk with the pram, but my 3 year old was in an active mood which slowed the pace. We did some exercises with the outdoor gym, benches and resistance bands in Buggy Babes style. He's currently obsessed with "running shorts" (won't do long trousers at present). He also packed his little rucksack with a resistance band and "running water bottle". When asked in the cafe if he'd been walking, he replied that he'd been running. The journey home resulted in an unusual double nap, which I exploited by doing some exercises from my magazine with the swiss ball. I even had a go on the trampoline!

So given that most of the week has involved being away, or being in sole charge of the little people, I think that's been a good start. Roll on week two...