I eased off on the mileage this week, some short gentle runs, a circuits session and a half marathon training run .... this training malarkey is starting to pay off too.
First, Monday night circuits session in Olchfa Skool sports hall, led by Pilot Light from our running club. 45 second bursts on a number of stations with 15 second recovery. Exercises ranged from weighted lunges, push ups, ab crunches, shuttle runs to a new exercise for me. It was a bit like a burpee, in that you do a squat but once up out of the squat then its a jump over a small hurdle ... they've been christened "Herpes" and for my schoolboy sense of humour, that name kept me entertained when my lungs were crying out for me to stop. Followed up with some yoga type exercises at the end ... I'm about as flexible as a housebrick, so these types of moves don't come easy to me at all .... what looks relatively straight forward can be very painful, kudos to those who manage these week in week out !
Tuesday was spent recovering from Monday, Wednesday however, was a lovely warm day so we decided to hit the beach, Llangennith to be exact, who can resist these views eh ?
It was such a nice day, I managed a gentle 3 miler on the beach, all good practice. In the evening it was club night, which was a sprint session on the field next to Swansea Uni track .. like a billiard table the pitch was. Session was a 10 metre run getting up to speed, 30 metre sprint, focussing on form rather than all out speed and then a 10 metre slow down, followed by a recovery jog of about 150 metres. Of course, when I say the sprint was all about form rather than speed, that was the intention, however, when there's a few middle aged men next to each other the competitive spirit takes over, I think nearly every sprint turned into a race ... really enjoyed it but by god, my hamstrings were still reeling 4 days later ! Session ended with a cool down and more of the yoga type stretches we did on Monday. Thursday saw my youngest daughter, my wife and I embark on a gentle jog through the forest. this was such a nice thing to do, running along side my wife and daughter was a lovely experience. Now, I must say I was very impressed with what my wife, Lou, managed. As many of you will know, she had breast cancer last year, and had to endure chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a bilateral mastectomy .... so its knocked the stuffing out of her. She managed a mile, which may not sound like much but given the amount of treatment she's had I was very impressed with how far she managed.
Work interrupted my training for a couple of days, but on Sunday morning, before my 12 hr night shift, I decided to do a half marathon with a weighted backpack, only 3kg to start with. I'm thinking the sooner I get used to running with 8-10kg on my back the better. The route was from my house, through the forest, up towards Velindre and then up the hills towards the lakes, all the way up to the top one and then back down home. Now, I decided to use my heart rate monitor as an indicator of effort rather than just looking at my pace all the time (learning a lesson from my 10k PB from the other week !). Now, it was a nice run and it felt well controlled, a few hills got my heart up to 160bpm but in the main it was around the 145 mark. However, I'd made another schoolboy error in that I hadn't charged my garmin and the battery warning came up just after I turned for home so I had to disconnect the hrm. Obviously I had to have a peak at the pace and it was surprisingly quicker than I had done this route before. In fact, by the time I was hitting 10 miles I could smell blood ... it looked like another PB was on. Prior to this my fastest half marathon was last years Swansea Half in a time of 1 hour 58 mins and 40 ish seconds .... so despite it being a 'gentle training run' I decided to keep the pace going and see what I got. At 12.6 miles in my garmin died, but I knew I'd do the extra 1/2 a mile in the run back home ..... my final time ( allowing for 1/2 mile at the average pace for the whole run) was 1 hour 52 minutes 8 seconds .. I'd smashed the 1/2 marathon PB by over 6 minutes on a very hilly course with 3kg on my back ! This is the elevation profile for the first half of the run, the second half being the same but in reverse !
I thought I'd add this photo just because its a good one !
A quieter week on the fundraising front again, which is now starting to concern me ... however, that's my problem ... wrote about 40 emails to local businesses and now waiting to hear from them, just 2 or 3 would be good ! On a much more positive note, my mother in law continues to add her considerable amount of help, this time managing to secure two hampers of loreal products that I will be either be raffling or auctioning off ... here they are, one womens and one mens hamper !
Also, I've stolen another fundraising idea from one of my club members. I'm selling dates in a dairy for £10 each, once I've sold them all, I will pull a date from the hat and the winner will get £300 ! How does that sound .. a good way to help sponsor me and with a chance of getting a considerable amount of money back - lets see how it goes !
Again, congratualtions on getting this far, here's the obligatory plug for the fundraising page, click me, you know it makes sense
Final thought for the week - one day, you'll wake up and there wont be any more time to do the things you've always wanted - do it now
Fatboy
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