Good Day Sunshine

My running was terrible today – I felt exhausted and out of breath at the slightest incline. It made me worry about tomorrow’s 9 miler, given how quickly I got tired on an ‘easy run’. However, none of this matters.

It was such a beautiful day today that being outside in the sunshine, plodding through Priory Park, listening to Sufjan Stevens, life seemed perfect for 38 minutes. As long as I could keep moving and not actually die of exhaustion, I couldn’t do anything but count this as a Good Day.

It’s amazing how much difference the weather can make. A cliche I know, but who cares. I wore shorts for the first time since October!

Bad Tempo

Tempo run (hard): 20 minutes, plus a mile warmup and cooldown.

This was exhausting. I still felt tired from yesterday so I decided to run home from work. Running after I get home is so hard on a Friday night, pretty much impossible. If I take my kit to work in the morning I make a visible commitment to doing the run. I have to sacrifice taking my handbag and, more importantly, my book as i can’t carry them home. There’s no way I could take the tube home carrying my trainers instead of wearing them, the guilt would be too much.

I mapped today’s run on mapmyrun.com to try and keep the 20 minute stretch to flat, straight roads. Tricky in Islington, but 10 minutes in to the tempo section i was grateful for every traffic light. Perhaps I took the suggestion (hard) a bit too seriously.

After 15 minutes, on the mild incline of Highbury Park, I had to stop for a cyclist and ended up walking for about half a minute. I ran the rest of the 20 fairly fast but I feel like that was a failed training run. Still, I worked hard and clocked up another 5 miles. An “easy run” tomorrow, then something vaguely hideous is lurking on Sunday. Eep.

Yew Gee Aitch

Ugh. Yesterday was bad; today was worse. My thighs were aching from the first hill and they still hurt now. And i only managed 4 miles. Slowly. I don’t ever remember this happening the day after an interval training run.

Could it be anything to do with the blood donation? I don’t think so – I didn’t feel short of oxygen, I just ached. It must just be because I worked so very hard in the gym yesterday. If i were American, or more positive, or a man, I might not be moaning- i would be “owning” the pain. A righteous pain! A pain to be proud of!

Ugh.

Interminable intervals

Today’s run was hard work. It was 5 x 1k at 10k pace with 2 min recoveries and I ran it in the gym just in case there were any after-effects of Monday’s blood letting. I’m not sure there were, though I’d happily blame my performance on that.

I’m trying to use a 10k pace of 14.2km/h, as if it were actually conceivable that I could run a 10k in 42 minutes. I’d love to do that in the summer, but I was pretty fit last year and couldn’t break 43 minutes, over four races.

I just about managed the pace but it was really tough for the first two intervals. It got more comfortable for the next two, which I suppose is good, but the final km was hideous. I know I only managed to keep the pace up because of the treadmill- if I’d been running outside I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from slowing down. Instead I panted along at 14.2km/h, staring at the l.e.d display until the metres clicked up to the final km. I’m not convinced I’ve made myself any more able to run a better 10k race, or even half-marathon as a result of this, but at least I finished the run.

Having skipped a day’s running yesterday, I’ll be running everyday until Monday now. Please let there be sunshine.

Vampires ate my trainers

I gave blood last night,  but I didn’t think through the consequences for today’s interval training run. It’s an absolutely beautiful day – cold and crisp and sunny, perfect for running – and I’m dying to get out there, but the nurse said I shouldn’t do any exercise for 24 hours.

I am quite tempted to go anyway, but I know I have a tendency to put running before sense so am trying not to do that this time. One day is not going to make any difference to the training. It’s Shrove Tuesday, so perhaps  I c0uld try interval training with pancakes instead: 5 pancakes at 10k pace, with 2 minute recoveries?

The blood-letting was fascinating.  It was held in a decrepit church hall, with queues of whey faced people and barking nurses. Like a post-apocalyptic triage hospital with unlimited tea and biscuits. My pint drained out in 4 minutes, which seems frighteningly fast. I wonder if it’s a sign of a healthy heart?  I am kidding myself that it is. I have now done some scientific research (thanks Wikipedia) and see that it will take 8 weeks for my blood to magic itself* back to normal. Just in time for my race, which was obviously the plan.

*official scientific term

Country Roads (Take Me Home)

Even on a cold March day with no hint of blue sky, 8 miles along country lanes like this will always beat a trot down the Stroud Green Road. I’ve been staying at the parental home this weekend and managed to get out twice, with varying success.

The first run, the dreaded ‘tempo’, is best passed over swiftly. Thanks to a minor stomach complaint it was cut short as I too was caught, um, short. I managed 36 minutes and walked (shuffled) the rest.

Today’s was thankfully untroubled by bowel-related incidents. I did however see a Red Kite, two Buzzards, a live rabbit, several dead ones and a farmer demonstrating the right place to wear a Barbour jacket and Hunter wellies (ie in a field, rather than Dalston). Amid all this nature watching, I also managed to run 8 miles at 7.5 mins/mile without really noticing.

A good run.

25 miles this week, but not a great start to the training really. I felt sluggish then ill on the interval and tempo sessions so plenty to improve on.

Friday Fail

A confession: this morning I spent 45 minutes reading my book club book in bed this morning instead of running 6 miles. I am currently feeling pretty guilty, though I will run it tomorrow instead.

As if a Friday morning spent eating toast and drinking tea  in bed, when I could have been running in the cold, wasn’t already enough of a guilty pleasure, the book I’m reading made it even more so. Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls is more Irish than a pint of Guinness eating a potato in a peat bog. I’m only 50 pages in but I’m already feeling nauseous from the steaming mounds of hokey oirish charm seved with a side order of paedophilia and domestic violence. I feel like a teenager reading a Maeve Binchy hidden under a geography text book.

Back to the running guilt. My knees are feeling a little strained after the exertions of the last 3 days so I think a rest was necessary rather than simply fancied. They have to make it through 14 miles this weekend, so I feel it only fair to let them de-creak for a day.

Double-decker

When I’m running to a training schedule, I try to fit the running in to my life, rather than the other way around. This sounds very sensible and non-Madonna-ish, but in reality it means I run at crazy times, carrying bags of stuff, with a hangover or, in today’s case, twice in 12 hours.

Yesterday’s commandment was “OFF, cross-train, or easy run of 30-45 minutes”. Today’s was “Easy run: 30-45 minutes”. I’m going out for drinks tonight so knew I would have to run this morning but, rather than take a fully legal day OFF, I hopped aboard the cross-train and went to the gym last night at 7pm like a loser.

Getting changed afterwards, I heard a woman say to her friend, “I couldn’t come more than twice a week, exercising more than twice a week is too much, it’s not healthy”. At 6.55am this morning, running up Crouch End Hill for the second time with my husband in the biting wind, I thought she might be onto something.

I’m a bit nervous about tomorrow’s run. It’s a “tempo run”, and I still don’t fully understand what they are… I think it’s when you run almost as fast as you can over that time/distance, but not quite. Which, over 4 miles with 1 mile warm up and cool down, at 6.30am with a hangover, is not going to be pretty. Eek!

New Leaves

Today I have turned over not one, but two new leaves. I have started a proper training programme and begun blogging every day. If I say it here, then I have to stick to it. Both leaves are now firmly turned over and stuck to the internet.

The first run in the programme was the snappily titled “5 x 800m at 10k pace; recover after each repeat for half the interval time”. In reality this translated as “leg it past frightened pedestrians at an uncertain pace for just over three minutes, panicking alternately that you are going too slow/fast, then wheeze along for two minutes hoping time has mysteriously stood still and you have a bit longer before the next sprinty bit”.

I was really surprised it was so hard, given that I’ve been running pretty regularly since a marathon in November. I think it’s because I struggle with the concept of 10k pace when not either a) running a 10k race, or b) on a treadmill. It’s difficult to judge how fast I am going when I have to dodge past dogs, stop for traffic lights and run up hills. I suppose I could use technology to solve this problem, but I have a feeling that it’s important to be able to judge how fast I’m running.

Apart from the uncertainty about pace, it was a fair start to my training, a 35 minute run home down some of Islington and Holloway’s less salubrious roads, listening to the new Radiohead album. I have a theory about that album which I’m hoping that future listens will bear out: I think it’s like the ‘lotus flower’ in the middle track – it slowly unfurls, starting out harsh and impenetrable, but opening out into something beautiful by the end.

Effortless running

Ok, running wherein no particular effort was expended. Not quite the same thing…

I went to the gym on Tuesday and ran 3 miles on a treadmill in the middle of my usual cross training routine, then ran 5 miles last night around Crouch End, just before the Arsenal-Barcelona match. I felt quite stiff after the weekend during both – my ankles are worrying me a tiny bit.  Weirdly, on Tuesday it was the left ankle then on Wednesday the right. I really should stretch more (that will be my epitaph).

As I’m still at work at 6pm today, so there is no chance I’m going to make myself run tonight. This might be a wise move.  I have my work appraisal tomorrow and I know I’d spend each step worrying about all the things I could say, I shouldn’t say, they might say, they might not say, I might cry. That way madness, truly, lies.