Morning folks,
Aussie checking in with an update and to confirm that I completed my planned 30 minute slow run today (W2R1 on the Aussie210K programme) this morning in lovely midsummer sunshine at 6am in Helsinki... 24 hours later than planned! My legs and knees are playing up a little this week after my Sunday 6K "hard" run so this morning was a deliberately slow recovery run. I used the Garmin to monitor heart rate and keep it down below my usual peaks and slowed myself by about 1min/km... this got me about 4.5km in the 30 minutes but included some hill work this morning as well (it being Dune June and all that!)..
This morning taught me the following:
1) 3 rest days are fine if you need them. (in fact, the Garmin suggested 3 days recovery after Sunday's effort - maybe it's accurate!. It now says 36 hours so that shows that I was more well paced today... I read up on how it works this out and it's a fairly well thought out scientific formula...
2) If you're body tells you to slow down, you should slow down - 30 minutes is 30 minutes (or 10 or 20 or 5 - whatever point you're at - you know what I mean!).. no point making aches and pains worse and ending up on that injury couch... aches and pains are "normal" in some respects (C25K certainly threw some my way) but I'm also now much more aware of what "normal" is for me and when to stop and/or slow down... I expect to experience some level of "aching" as I'm training my body to double the distance it has only just got used to!
3) It's actually harder than you think to run "slower than you normally do" (but I think everyone should try it) - at least I found it that way. Once I had settled in though it was rather pleasant - much more relaxing in a lot of ways...
4) I am starting to suspect you don't need to go crazy on duration/pace/distance to work up to longer distances. I think that simply building up mileage slowly and letting your body recover helps immensely... Slow and steady... we're all new at this and it's important to remember that not all of us are elite athletes so we need to train carefully and slowly... and accept our own limits...
5) I ran today without headphones and practised the Bazza approach to breathing... I need more practice... quite weird just hearing my feet on the trail and concentrating on the breathing... running without music will take some getting used to!
I'm not going to set any speed records in my 10K but I'm confident I am building the right level of stamina and slowly increasing distances on my long runs on the weekends to get over that finish line in one piece... just over 6 weeks to go! Yikes! I am confident I can finish in under 1:10 and I'm aiming to get that as close to 1:00 as I can... 
May do a cheeky Parkrun on Saturday (depending on how the legs feel later today)...
Happy running folks! Have a great day!
Aussie210K - rebooted... 
Feeling like I'm getting somewhere ... slow and steady!
Times and 5k w3r3 completed
Planless 10K: W2R1! 
Graduation, slow and steady!
