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
Left it late - blowing a gale
Running and blowing your nose
17K today - bit easier than last week's 16K
First solo run back in the UK
Pressure cooker recipes
