So, this morning while my elder son had his first fencing lesson, I sneaked in a sly hour of kettlebells. I highly recommend this as an all round fitness workout - it really does wonders for your core. After Insanity I would say it is the best supplement to running.
Anyway when we got home we were both quite hungry so had a good breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast (sprouted grain bread so still good and healthy). I actually had scrambled eggs on vegan chilli on toast. It was just the ticket for calorie depleted wobbly limbed bodies.
Then we made some tomato soup for lunch to make a slight dent in the vast mountain of tomatoes erupting from the polytunnels. Again was yummy.
Then this afternoon ( a good couple of hours after eating), we set off for the nature reserve, My son on his bicycle, me on foot. My training intensity has picked up a bit this week and with the unscheduled trail run on Thursday I was a little bit tired and achey, so had no intentions of doing anything more than a very easy pace 10k.
When we set off I quickly realised I was not feeling very strong at all. I generally pay no attention to how I feel for the first 10 minutes/ 2km as it often has no bearing on how I feel once I have found my stride, but today I really didn't feel any better as we went on. Then suddenly at 5.5km the soup and chilli and eggs put in a dramatic reappearance. I only just managed to veer off to the drainage ditch n time and almost blasted myself back across the path with the sheer projectile force as what seemed to be everything I had eaten since the age of 27 jetted out of me, to the huge delight and excitement of my son, who beamed at me approvingly , muttering "Cool!" and "Wooahh! Awesome!"
To my even greater distress, Mlle Garmin advised that it had taken me 38 minutes to arrive at this ignominious pass.
Revived by a bit of water (having a pacer on a bicycle means you can take much more water with you than usual) I pressed on, and to my surprise, found I felt much better. By km7 I was clipping off sub 6 min kms again and km 8-9, I see now looking at my splits, was 5.12.
Once we got back to the car, at 11.1, I felt like I had just started and decided to press on and get a couple more in the bank, so we headed back out again. I'm not sure when the 16k target popped into my mind, but once it did I was quite set on it. 10 miles. It's the next big milestone. Around the 14k mark I had slowed down again considerably and was feeling distinctly less fresh. My son was complaining rather at having cycled such a distance, but perked up considerably after a rather attractive lady stopped him and quizzed him on how far we were going ( we were passing her for the third time).
And so back we came once again. We were a little short at 15.78 so I trotted up the road and back just to click over the 16k mark. And there it was done. Not very fast. 16.09k in 1:46, but for a first attempt at the distance, and counting in the spew break, I'm pleased with it.
Am sitting with ice packs on elevated knees know and have a hot date with a hot bath very shortly. As a preventative measure. Apart from slightly tight calves I feel fine atm, but know from experience that means nothing and will probably regret the overdistance in the morning. For now though, I feel, to quote Bill Bowerman "Exhilarated not exhausted."
xxx
anyone been doing c25k for weight loss? and how has it been going? also some success stories would be great and what your diets are like.
Parkrun!
Expected the news from physio but it’s not great. 🙁
