My week in running

I have had a massive week with work – I know you don’t care about the details but to give some context, I had two days where I spent five hours in the car just getting to and from where my clients were and still had to put in an eight hour work day. This has resulted in Not Enough Exercise.

Here’s what I did do:

I made it to my running group on Wednesday night where we did the tan time trial. Not my best time but certainly not bad for a summer run (for me). I’m looking forward to seeing how much I can improve over the next eight weeks or so.

The Tan (source)

I also managed my long run home work today. I knocked out 7kms in 51 minutes or so – this was adopting a run one song, walk one song for most of the time and non-stop running for kilometres three and five. The reason for the walk one/run one method? – my lack of stretching and strengthening has resulted in a cranky knee and twingey calf.


Here’s what I didn’t do:

Monday night homework (naughty girl) as this was one of my big driving days, so that’s down on the “to do” list for next week.

Either of the two RPM classes I wanted to.


Next Week
Thankfully, there’s a forecast of lovely cool weather for the week – hooray!, so I’m thinking this might be a good week for running.

12 Goals for 2012 - January Round Up

Back at the beginning of the year, full of optimism, I created 12 goals for 2012. Here’s how I’m going so far (I admit, I have stolen this recap idea from Diet Girl).


January goal: 100 days challenge – to move every day for at least 30 minutes

January progress: I managed to move 15 days out of 31 days in January (~50%).

January assessment: I’m disappointed that I didn’t keep the momentum from the beginning of the month going once I returned back to work. Acknowledging that it is just an excuse, my trip to PNG threw me and then the pressures of 31 December reporting have taken a toll since my return.

January learnings: I’m going to have to plan better, get up earlier and exercise at times I’m not comfortable with if I want to make better progress on this goal.


February goal: This month is stretch and strengthen month. It’s now 4 February and I’ve not gone so well on this but there’s still time!

The day I did a two hour RPM class

And now desperately want to sleep. It's 3.00pm, so not really a sleeping time.

This could be me...if I were a kitten...you know what I mean though

"How was the class?", I hear you ask.

It was massively sweaty. I was massively sweaty. The guy next to me was massively, massively sweaty. I'm talking HUGE puddle on the floor sweaty. Puddle so big it was running under my bike and onto the girl on the other side. Sorry, that's fairly gross, but I gotta report the facts.

The first part of the class was just a standard sort of RPM class - warm up, hills, intervals, racing, etc. After the first hour we moved onto a hard track, recovery track, repeat mode. I'm here to tell you that recovery tracks are still ridiculously hard and even more so the more you do. I will admit to not using as much resistance as I possibly could have throughout the class but I was focussed on making it to the end and worried I might burn out if I went too hard, too early.

Turns out it was a good call because I nearly died. I would have been just a little dead, however, dead none the less.

I made it to the end though (a few people pulled out early - is it wrong to thing I'm so much better than them?). I was so happy (and so tired) when it finished I did nearly have a little cry. Weird, right? I am a cryer though, so probably not so much. Crying is my body's way of expressing emotion. I channelled my crying into clapping, which we all did.

I am now enjoying an afternoon of listening to the Triple J Hottest 100 - it's practically compulsory if you're Australian - soon to be followed by a nanna nap and then some work (boo!). The sensible part of me is saying I need to do a pretty significant foam rolling session too (double boo!).

It's Wednesday and I ran

First run group was tonight and thankfully it was a little cooler today than it has been because I still nearly died. Yes, nearly died. I'm not exaggerating...much.

Tonight's session was intervals plus some technique drills. Reassuringly, I felt ill during the warm up! I pushed through, took walk breaks when I thought I was about to throw up (fabulous side effect of the heat for me) and ended up covering just over 5km for the night.

It's so frustrating that I struggled so much tonight when Sunday's run was longer and faster and nowhere near as hard.

Luckily, to detract from tonight's failure (because that's what it feels like), I have tomorrow's epic RPM session to look forward to.

Too much of a good thing?

Back to the gym today for RPM. Good class with lots of sweating involved - always ideal for a RPM class.

Tomorrow is running group - I can't wait!!

Then, I have signed up for RPM on Thursday too. But this is no ordinary class, it's an Australia Day special that goes for 2 hours. I seriously think it's too much but I'm doing it anyway. I can spend the rest of the day sleeping to recover if required - hooray for holidays!

What do you think? Crazy?

I don't like summer

Controversial, I know.

I don't like being sweaty when I've done nothing to warrant it. Sure, if I work out, sweat is perfect. If I'm doing nothing, sweat is wrong.

But, it's summer, so I really just have to suck it up.

And, on a completely unrelated note: I had lovely Maribyrnong River run this morning - hooray for not being in PNG anymore! I ended up doing a bridge to bridge loop with an end of run hairpin - 6km in total. Without paying any attention to my pace (which was super slow) I managed five very consistent kilometer splits, only 4 seconds difference between them. I'm pretty stoked about that.

I start running group again on Wednesday. The means 10 weeks until my nemesis run "Run for the Kids" is on. I drove the Domain Tunnel and Bolte Bridge section of the run today and reminded myself how long, steep and unshaded it is. Yay?

Sad Monday

Headed back to work today after a glorious two week break. Although today was a bit of a cheat as I spent the day flying and not really working. What's more, the internet wasn't working when we arrived so I couldn't even check my emails.

While the day was fairly cruisy, I did have to get up at 3.30 in the morning to catch my first flight.

As predicted, there was no exercise today. This makes me sad. Tomorrow is a new day and I hope will be more successful.

In addition to the lack of sleep and exercise, today is sad Monday as it marks the return of "professional hair". I am not ashamed to admit that over the holiday period, and despite the hot weather, I implemented a no brush/no wash system for my gym sweaty hair. I found that sweat worked as a sort of natural hairspray and assisted in keeping my hair out of my face and in a secure ponytail (please note, secure does not necessarily equal tidy). I feel this may be frowned upon in my professional services office.

I'm also sad that I can no longer go to midday classes and that I've had to create a schedule to fit in my running and gymming once I return to normality.

To avoid this post being a total whinge session, I will finish on a positive note and be happy about the Internet coming back on while we were out getting dinner AND be happy because there were six different vegetables being served at dinner, which is awesome! I love lots of vegetables, especially when two of them are brussell sprouts and yellow squash.