One More Week

One more week until Melbourne Marathon. Here's hoping it's a nice cool day without rain (although, I'm pretty confident I'll be fine even if it is a bit rainy - having run in the storm that stopped Melbourne).

One more week until holidays. While not looking forward to 24 hours on a plane, I am very much looking forward to new cities, new sights and catching up with old friends.

One more week to get over this stupid cold I've picked up (no no no no, now is NOT the time for being sick).

One more week to cement my current runnings times. During this morning's 6km, I ran 5 of those kilometers in under 6:30min/km. I am so massively excited and happy that my running program is actually demonstrating an improvement in my running.

Progress and puddles

Woo hoo for Wednesday!

Only two more days and then it's the weekend. And what could be better than a weekend...oh, yes...holidays!! Only 12 more sleeps!!

But before then, I've got the Melbourne Marathon 10km. And in tonight's run group we were repeating our Tan time trial. Eight (?) weeks ago I did the same course and the great news is, tonight I did it a bit over a minute faster.

Here's tonight's effort:

Please note: Average pace of 6:43. That, my friends, is progress. I am stoked to be below 7:00 average after the ongoing leg problems I've been having. The Very Slow second kilometer is due to Anderson Street aka The Long Hill of Calf Pain.

And, what's more, because I am totally hard core, this is what I was running in tonight.

This storm shut the Melbourne Show early and caused Metro chaos (but let's face it, Metro chaos is not difficult to create).

And I ran in it.

Soooo many puddles.

The storm and rain also meant that of our usual running group of 20, two of us turned up. Yep, there was just me and one other guy. He very sweetly looped back to pick me up after he'd done his lap and finished with me.

In other running news, I entered this today.

I can't wait.

Monday is a good day for running

I'm multi-tasking tonight, writing this post whilst rolling out my very tight calves. This may end up being a case of too little attention to each task results in a poor effort for both but I'm pretty tired and very keen for bed.

After yesterday's effort, I nearly talked myself out of running group tonight. However, I decided that it was a shame to waste the money I've paid when I don't really have a good reason not to go.

As always, running was definitely the right choice. We did another interval session tonight, which went well. This was followed by some sprints alternated with push ups.

By the end I had no control over my legs (hardly surprising as I don't think they were quite recovered from yesterday's effort) and I pretty good burn going in my shouldery chest area (yep, anatomy is clearly my area of expertise).

At the risk of completely frying myself, I'm RPMing again tomorrow night before Wednesday night's time trial session. I'm looking forward to that because I'm keen to see what kind of progress I've made, other than the ability to run 10km very slowly.

Seeking replacement legs

Oh man! Am I sore today.

On Friday I tried another class at the gym. I naively thought because it was beginner class that I wouldn't really feel anything. Turns out I know nothing. There were a lot of squats in the class. And let's face it, when you do a lot of squats, you're likely to have sore quads. So I have sore quads.

To back up my class, I had a night on my feet at some work drinks. Hmm, a night on my feet plus alcohol = not a great recovery.

Saturday night I went to watch Storm v Warriors (boo, Storm lost) and to try and loosen things up, I walked the 20 minutes to the stadium from the train station. I wouldn't call it a success but I'm sure it helped.

Skip to this morning and my 10km run. It wasn't quite as good as I had hoped. I left too late which meant it was hotter than I would have liked. When I was running, I was running well. But I couldn't (hmm, it maybe that couldn't was actually more didn't want to) run the whole distance. I had planned to put in some walk breaks because I haven't had a consistent enough lead in to this distance. But with my shot quads, those walk breaks were pathetic.

These legs don't look as tired as mine

Not to dwell on the negative, I'm going to focus on the fact that I covered the 10km. And I'm pretty confident that with better prep (ie. avoiding excessive squats for the next two weeks) and the earlier start (no burning sun), I can do much better come race day. Whether I can manage the consistency and pace to beat last year's time, I'm not sure. But I will give it a go.

Now, here's the question that I'm currently debating. Do I sign up for a 10km race in New York for when I'm there on holidays? I think it would be cool to have a bib (and medal!) for a New York race. Is it crazy to think of running a race when I'm holidays? I'd like to stress, I do not mean race a race. I'm just talking about turning up and being a part of it. I know most of my friends will just think I'm weird for even considering it.

Tired

I am an eight hours of sleep kind of girl. This means today's experiment where I ran last night, got to bed around 10.30 and then got up this morning at 4.50 (after waking up at least hourly and having horrid dreams the rest of the time) and then going to RPM before work did not go well.

Getting in my morning exercise was, however, a massive success. I was on a high all day (well, until 3.45 when the lack of sleep caught up with me).

Awesome.

What a difference a run can make

Yay for Wednesday!

At the risk of appearing completely up myself, I totally rocked tonight!!

Tonight's running was repetitions. We started off with a warm up jog to the oval which was to be our running ground for the night. Once there we did eight 60 second repetitions with the aim of running the same distance each time. Two minute recovery walk back to the start between reps. The goal was to run at about 85-90%. I think I managed about 70% (which is excellent for me). And, even better, I was pretty close to spot on for each rep.

So, that's all pretty good, I hear you say (at which point I recommend you stop talking to your computer). But that's not even the best part. The best part is, on the run back to where my bag was safely stored, I ran all the way up Anderson Street hill AND I kept around an average 7:20min/km pace for the run back. Obviously, as I am not powering up those hills, that meant I was sub 7:00min pace on the flat.

I am aware that for most runners that's pretty slow, but I am the Queen of 7:30min/km pace.

So I rock.

I was so stoked with tonight's effort that I actually danced at the train station on the way home (there's so many crazy people there I pretty much just blended in). The absolutely horrid afternoon I had was completely blown away.

And this is why I love running.

Monday night stairs

It's Monday, so you know the drill - running group tonight.

Tonight's session was stairs and tabata. Two things that are not particularly ideal for my poor tight calves and generally dodgy knees. But if I live my life pandering to my various leg discomforts I'd never get out there. Which meant, I ran up and down stairs and tabata-ed for about 30 minutes in the quite warm and windy weather.

I'm not pandering to my legs...

You can bet I worked that foam roller to within an inch of its life when I got home...ow!!! but totally worth it.

I've signed up to try out a gym and do an RPM class on Thursday morning. While I do enjoy the running, I'm thinking some sort of cross training/alternate activity will not go astray. I had a bit of a tour of the facilities during my lunch break and I have to admit I was pretty impressed. There are quite a few other classes I'm interested in (which is crazy because I am so not a class person) at the moment. It's a bit pricey though so I need to work out how well I can fit going to classes into my schedule. I know it's totally worth making time for exercise and that I reap extensive benefits from it but... Well, I'll try the class on Thursday and then we'll take it from there.