Back on the Horse

It was time to get back kon that horse.
First evening run in over 3 months and I went out easy at a 6:30 pace up the hill (with the Garmin on, yes it worked!). The second k up the hill was a 6:20 then I was blinded, all I could see in front of me was a 5k PB and nothing else would do. (I know all you lovely people who offered advice and thought I might be over training are now cringing) I lifted the tempo and covered the 3rd k in 5:31. Next thing Rammstein Du Hast came on the MP3 player and I maintained the heightened tempo thinking all the way "Yes I hate you theiving bastards and next time you better have your running shoes because I will chase you all the way to Melbourne!". Needless to say I covered the 4th k in 5:29. Then there was the final k, well with the end in sight, the rain now driving hard into my screwed up squinted eyed face a went like a mad man...and boy was it the best feeling run I have ever done...I will sleep well tonight! (On my new bed, which finally arrived today, hard matress, just the way I like it) Well, I finished it off in possibly the fastest split I have recorder a 5:04 Giving me a PB of 29:09 for 5.03km route (a sub 29min 5k!).

What I learnt from my run.
Running in the rain is invigourating!
Running is great for releasing anger, frustration, anxiety and stress!
I can consistently run 5:30 splits and on a flat course hopefully can attain my 2006 5k goal this year.

What Garmin should learn.
All computer related equipment that I know of are prone to freeze up...SO IT MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA TO BUILD IN A RESET BUTTON! so that you don't have to wait for the battery to run flat for the unit to turn off so that you can reload the firmware!

Just to appease all those much wiser people out there...I will not be doing a long run this weekend. Maybe a short one 10k or so, there is a SARRC 10K event on Sunday, though Saturday night at Faker and Friends Birthday is likely to be a late one so an early start is not likely on Sunday.

I needed that run so bad.

So the month that was.
March 148.7km 17hr.
5 weeks to my first Half Marathon.
I am ready.

Motivation Low Point

Well, I wouldn't say that I am prone to bouts of depression, but I feel I am slipping that way right now. After that rear ending of my car last month, someone broke into our house and stole all of our electrical and jewelry on Tuesday, no big deal we still had our new bed suite coming on Wednesday to look forward too so I took the day off work. The CSI team after coming 2hrs late finally left at lunch time and I thought, no point going to work, the stuff will be delivered this afternoon. I called to confirm delivery...All OK. Got a call at 3:30pm from the delivery guys...they were in Penfield, ~30k, away form Enfield where it was supposed to go and there was no way it was coming till Friday!
OK now I was getting a little depressed and getting out of bed this morning was tough (half an hour later than planned) I got up and reschedule the run to 5km (time trial). Went out side to warm up and the Garmin would got stuck on 3/4 locating and wouldn't turn off etc. Ended up running an untimed time-trial (felt like I did a PB but no one will ever know) later looked up a thread I saw on coolrunning and discovered that this fault was probably fatal. Damn!!!!!!! Just bought it...from a dealer on Ebay...and I remember reading somewhere that this voids the warranty...will need further investigation but I really am not feeling like doing anything right now other than curling up asleep in bed. I wish they had stolen the Garmin!

Anyway, 5km today in what I suspect was 28min but will say sub 30min.

First Hill Repeats

Tried my first Hill repeats session this morning. 2k warm up over some hills and then 8x30sec repeats up a relatively gentle hill. Seemed a little easy as I completed the 8 repeats quite well. Maybe next time I will try longer maybe 60sec or a steeper hill? I am not sure which would be better. I think the fact that my weekly runs are around quite undulating courses gave me an edge in this hill repeat business as I didn't find it as hard as I was expecting. (will have to see how I pull up tomorrow!)
On a side note my first issue of Runners World arrived yesterday (finally) and after flicking through it and reading one or two things I found it very interesting and a good read. It even had an article on hill repeats! It is a bit late for their 12 week 1/2 marathon training program though as I am all ready 6 weeks out! I think too that my own program is somewhere between the beginner and intermediate program, but I will look closely into both programs and try and incorporate some of the ideas/training regimes into my own program.

Got the endurance.

Well, after feeling really lazy yesterday and sleeping in, today I too felt lazy but managed to roll out of bed about 7am to head down to the Torrens. Starting from Lower Port Rush rd I ran up the south side of the torrens for about 10k then turned around and ran back to the car along the north bank. I must say all those short ups and downs can get quite annoying. I hit a bit of a wall at about 17km after picking up the pace after the turn around walking quite a bit over the last 3km and finishing the 20k in 2hr26min. Hopefully the HM will be a bit easier as the Garmin (though rather dodgilly) has an average uphill away from town and downhill toward town (the direction of the HM). I am definately not used to seeing so many other people out on my long runs, walkers and bikeriders mainly though I did see about 6 runners, 3 passed me, though they looked pretty fresh and I was coming up on 18km.
So now, I know I have the endurance to go 21km, I think I will work on speed over the last 6 weeks before my first HM, Hill repeats on Tuesday! (well, I'll see how I pull up after todays effort, maybe just 30 sec reps up a slight hill to start with)

Always Next Week

Just another 7km this morning, nothing special, went out slow (though the policeman hiding in the bus shelter with the radar gun at 5:30am didn't bother to clock my speed!) cam home attacking the two hills, deciding that next week I might do some hill repeats. Doesn't look like my planned hills run will happen this weekend, baby coming a few days early, so I might do an out and back Torrens run along part of the HM course. There's always next week.

Side Goal Success!

Well semi-success on my side goal today, just an added bonus to running, weight loss. I weighed in this morning after my run at below 120kg for the first time in probably 6 years. YAY!! And yes I do weigh myself after a run because it gives better results and is more motivating as I am normal dehydrated to an extent. Now this morning I was definitely dehydrated, today was an easy 9km run, well it was easy up until the 6km mark when I started to feel a bit of cramp in my lower left abdomen. When this has occurred before I have put it down to being very dehydrated, and today is no different. Unlike a couple of weeks ago, at almost exactly the same point in the same run, I struggled on over the hills all the way home. I think the difference today was that is was pre-dawn and I didn't have the hot sun beating down on me as well. Anyway that will teach me to ignore my water drinking especially after cross-training last night on the exercise bike...what an idiot.
But after all of that the weigh in did make me feel better (BTW I also weighed myself when I got up and that was 121kg so in reallity I am almost there).
Back to the main goal coming up, the half marathon. Still feeling confident about a finish, and I am planning to add a bit of variety into the training, eg tempo, interval and speed training, to see if I can increase my pace and do a 2hr15min first HM because at the moment I am probably looking at around 2hr30min.
I was also thinking of doing a 5km time trial to gauge my progress and hopeful nudge my PB closer to my goal time, but I might put this off till next week to try and keep this week a little bit more relaxed after two tough runs.

Lesson Learnt

Tuesday Morning 05:30:00 hrs:
Left Side of brain: Lets do a Tempo Run.
Right Side of brain: Yeah that's a good idea.

My first real tempo run. This was a watchless tempo run and by watchless I mean that I didn't turn the backlight of my Garmin on and so resisting any temptation to look at it. Went out on the warm up 2km at a steady but not too slow pace (Garmin afterwards gave a 6:50 split for first 1km, 6:30 for second) started to wind it up over the next 3km ending with a 5:30 km split. Then there was the fun part, the two Ks back home with two hills. Lesson Learnt: If you are going to run harder than normal don't expect to find hills easy. I though I wasn't going to make it up the second one, needless to say I felt I was jogging on the spot for a while (When in actual fact I did 6:20 splits which is quite respectable for me over 7km but how was I to know that...I couldn't see my watch!)

Left Side of brain: That was great, can't wait to do it again.
Right Side of brain: I am tired, can we go back to bed?

In response to someone's comment (sorry I can't remember who it was and I am emailing this in) I have looked at a ½ Marathon Training Schedule, in fact I have looked at many and various ones, I have then taken all that in and devised my own hybrid training regime that I feel confident can achieve me my short term goal of just completing a half marathon. After that I will probably look at some sort of official training regime with speed work etc to improve on my "just out there to finish" times. If this is all going to work or not, I don't know, but at the moment I feel great, am injury free and highly confident of finishing 2 half marathons in May!

Yes!

What A relief. I struggled out of bed this morning thinking, "It is going to be a hard slog today!" but to my releif it was pretty cruisy around all 17.6km at a similar pace to last weeks long run 7.2min/km. Felt like I could have pushed on to the 21.1km mark so I am confident of making that distance in May. I also have to put a major vote in for going back to bed after a long run, I did and slept for two hours, waking up refreshed except for the chafing (what idiot didn't put vasaline on before the run!). I might take a week off from a long run next sunday and do a short 10k trail run, it could be fun but I'll have to see what the weather is going to be like first.
I can't believe I made it through this weeks planned schedule feeling so good, I think though that this week I will not try and increase any runs and just have an easy week.

Dazed and Confused

So in all the reminiscing of training past I forgot to mention this mornings recovery jog. It started with a very tired, sleepy roll out of bed. Opted for the 7km recovery jog. The first 5km were a struggle even at 7+min/km. The last two kilometres went by in what seemed like a minute as the mind just totally wandered and I phased out from running feet just one in front of the other, oh how time and kms fly when in this state. It is more dangerous when driving a car though, suddenly you are at work and you think, I can't remember getting here, I hope I didn't run any red lights!.

6 Months On!

Well I was asked the question, how am I going 6 months after starting running. It has actually probably been a bit longer than that but here is a quick recap.
I can probably trace the beginnings back to July '05,I started with just walking 8 km or so on the weekend and then added in some short jogs during the week. After a couple of weeks I started adding jogging to the long run and ended up with a longest run of 10km. From this point I overtrained for a couple of weeks in the lead up to my
goal, the City to Bay (12km) and my shins/achillis were giving me a lot of grief.
Following the C2B I was determined to continue running, for the Health benefits mainly but also to beat my C2B time as it disappointed me (though my goal was just to finish). Sensibly I rested I took it very easy for the first couple of weeks and then started consistently running 3-4 times a week. These runs were mainly 2-3km 15
min runs with the occasional 4-5km run on the weekend.
In December I decided that this was not enough and had minimal benefit, basically that I wanted to be running 5km each time so I started to slowly increase my runs from 2km to 4km but then Christmas and an extremely busy January hit, moving, Australian open (I went on the weekend it was over 40 everyday, consequently I had the next week off running).
That brings us to the start of February. In February I found www.CoolRunning.com.au and it has been the motivation to step it up another level and aim even higher then the next C2B. I started training 4 times a week starting at 2x4km, 2.2km and 7km long run and over the last month and a half have increased that to 2x7km, 9km and 15km long run (hopefully longer this weekend).
The feeling is great, just knowing that I can cruise in 12km at the next C2B when it was such a struggle last year and looking forward to just getting out there on the road, letting the mind wander and the legs go one foot in front of the other.
Now I have a target, a half marathon at the start of May and I am quietly confident that I can finish that. I am also looking forward to seeing the effect of regular running on an undulating route as I have not been on a flat one since I moved in January, so have I improved more than I think I have? That is a question I would love to answer with a yes.

In short, after such a long winded entry, I am still seeing positive benefits, still having fun and have a clear idea of what goals I want to achieve, though I might reassess these at a later date when I have a better understanding of what level of running I can get to. What I am looking forward to...achieving my goals, meeting other runners continuing the slow change of my lifestyle for the better.

Just another day.

Treated myself to a 9km run this morning...well it is my Birthday after
all. Went out at a reasonable pace, judging from my 1km splits, I was
gradually increasing the pace over 3km then I dropping back as I knew I
was going to fast but then it would start increasing again. Didn't
really push it going up the first of the two hills on the home stretch
and only pushed a little on the second. I still had plenty left in the
tank at the end so that boosts my confidence in a sub 60min 10k.
Average pace today was 6:19min/k and total time for 9.04km was
57min06sec.
I have been researching some trail running in the Hills, looking for
some nice trails to run. I am thinking that the Yurrebilla Trail might be the best (with detours onto the Heysen Trail) and will be trying it out next weekend I think. Looking forward to some challenging steep hills!

Growing Confidence

Feeling quite confident about completing my first half marathon in 8 weeks after the weekends long run, a couple more long runs building up the kms and hopefully I’ll be there at the finish line, and looking at my pace it should be under 2.5 hours.

Confidence that I can do it is growing bigger everydayFor instance, today I ran 7k and it felt like the easiest 7k of my life (which wouldn’t be hard) but I felt good, it was just a relaxed jog at about 6.5min/km though I pushed a little at the start of Macca’s hill just to test out the legs.

Had a really good play around with sportstracks and discovered it can actually do all I want it to do (and more). It doesn’t have the flexibility of being able to graph or play around with what ever you want, but other features out way this and it is in an easier format to manage. Therefore yesterday I transferred all the runs from my excel spreadsheet to sportstracks (luckily there were only 70) and the numbers add up which means I didn’t make any mistakes.

Training plan for the rest of the week:
Wednesday - 40 min cross training on exercise bike.
Thursday - moderate run 9km.
Friday - easy run 5 or 7 km depending on mood.
Sunday - long run 17-18km.

Goal Realisation

Well, I realised to reach my goal of a half marathon at the start of May, I might need to increase my long run to some semi-serious times. Hence I blew off the so-called "informal" fun run and did a long run instead, starting at 6am to avoid the sun, though it was still damn hot.
To avoid the catastrophe of last week, I steered clear of the beer last night and instead must have drunk 3L of water. Definately took my hydration back pack with me this morning (not making that mistake again).

The run consisted of 20 mins running 1min walking. As I read somewhere that this gives your running muscles a break or something, but it sounded like a good idea and was a good time to rehydrate and for little goals (I think it was here Marathon Rookie). It seemed to help and despite my mp3 battery dying 5km in I managed the 15km quite easily at a very slow pace. Now all I need to do is slowly increase this over the next month and B.I.N.G.O hopefully I should be able to finish my first HM!

Test drove my new Cool Max Targer socks today. They were good. Got a bit bloody though thanks to a little toe toe-nail. Still discovering the ins and outs of Sports Tracks software and might start moving all of my log from my fantastic excel spreadsheet into it. Though I do like the excell spreadsheet for ease of use...everything is there on the page and easy to graph, tabulate etc.

Hope I pull up all right for the SA public holiday tomorrow.

Thinking Long Term

Well, after reading about the Six Foot track, I have established a long term goal/plan.
2006 Goal: Finish Half Marathon. (hopefully at least twice)
2007 Goal: Finish Marathon. (hopefully at least twice)
2008 Goal: Finish Six Foot Marathon. (hopefully before cut-off)

These seem lofty goals for a newbie to running, but when does the transition from “beginner” to “runner” occur. I am hoping that it is upon successful completion of a HM, if not, a marathon, still a way to go then. With these new goals, it certainly was a motivator, it took so much self control this morning to hold myself to a 5km slow recovery jog. My mind was racing around and around with…lets just go another 7km again, or keep pushing out to 9km this morning and then that little, reasonable, steadying voice said “NO, don’t be an idiot, there will be time for that later but if you push it too much now, you will burn out or get injured.” My friend reason, or is it my enemy? Is it holding me back from going further and or faster? Patience. That is my game now.

Gravity, my friend.

Gravity must be the best physics law ever. I love that feeling I get when i'm powering up a hill and as I come to and over the crest I can feel my stride lengthening and...over I go...it just seems that I am now hurtling at a frightning pace down the other side as gravity takes hold.

After my usual 40min exercise biking on Wednesday evening, I set out this morning to go for a midweek longer run, just to try it on and see how it feels. It felt great. A little over 7k in a little over 45mins.

I am a little more committed to the Greenbelt HM in May now, but will need to step up training through the later half of this month to feel ready for it, increase the kms, especially on long runs. Almost ready to join SARRC now, we will see, I still plan to head down to the fun run on Sunday to trundle around 5kms. Hopefully everyone is friendly and if so, they may just be blessed with my membership ;O).

Ordering a Coolrunning cap today, despite reservations that it will be too small (shallow) for my big head, refer dorky profile photo which I will update once said cap arrives.

Fist Pumping Celebrations

Surfing the internet last night on the SA road runners website I found a nice calander of the running events in Adelaide. There is a fun run this weekend and I thought that the 5km run would be a good opportunity to set a new sub 30min PB, and be my first fun run since the City to Bay, I even went as far as printing off an entry form.

Needless to say when I headed out this morning I had almost forgotten the dissapointing long run of Sunday with a new goal in mind. I set out at a deliberately faster pace then normal, with the aim of running a consistent pace over the entire 5k instead of gradually increasing it over the distance which is what I seem to subconciously do. I didn't look at the Garmin once (after checking the first 1k split, 6:28mins), until halfway through my warmdown walk/jog. Seeing a Time of 29"34' brought about a big grin and some fist pumping into the warm pre-dawn air.

But what does this mean for Sunday's Fun Run, what should I aim for there now? On a relatively flatter track maybe I could go sub 29 mins and be closer to my 2006 goal? Maybe I should enter the 10K and just use it as my long run, but I think I want to start out with something easy and achievable for my first semi-group run so failure does not even enter my mind.

Some Lucky Kids

Well, after two late nights, drinking and a very hot and sunny morning I went for a long run this morning. Who thinks this post has a happy ending?

Running down Hampstead Rd I ran past two teenage punks (plus girlfriend) there were three factors that saved these three (or at least one) from a severe whooping by me, 6 foot 5 inches, 270lb.
1) A am not am aggressive person by nature and have never been in or sort out a fight. I avoid confrontation.
2) I had my headphones on and only caught the last few words of what the kid was yelling.
3) I was 4km into my long run, dehydrated and my body was compensating by slowing down my thought processes. It was 5 minutes later that thoughts of physical (well verbal, the choice to escelate to physical would have been all theirs) occurred to me.

The situation, I am running towards the teenages, one of them appeared to be yelling something back and across the road (I had headphones on, and couldn't here) as I got closer I heard words to the effect of "are you trying to lose weight! Because your diet is not working!" yelled in a jeering tone. At this time I passed them (maybe even startled the yeller who wasn't looking my way) and I glanced across the road. There was another teenager (about the same age 15 or so) on the side of the road walking the same direction I was running, quite overweight, walking.

Now running this scene through my head (slowly for the next 5 mins) I came up with three possible reactions I should have had on a normal day.
a) Stop dead infront of the yeller and insist that he apologise to the kid on the otherside of the road (possible consequences; physical/verbal abuse both of which I could probably have taken but to what end?; 2% chance the teenager will be scared witless and apologise to the other kid but to what end?)

b) Stop dead infront of yeller and stoop to his level with verbal abuse, probably stereo typing him on his clothes and abusing him about not being able to afford good clothes, wandering the streets because his no hoper parents have split up...nasty stuff...and the least likely to happen. (possible consequences: physical/verbal abuse no real help to other kid. Become just as bad as yeller)

c) Ignore yeller, cross road, and give kid a pep talk, like "ignore those guys, you are doing great, taking positive action in your life, gaining self esteem so you don't have to pretend you have some by taunting others with low self esteem". (possible consequences; kid tells me to F### OFF and leave him alone cause he is just walking to the shop and I run off having tried, or the Kid continues to take positive action is his life, gets healthy and weightloss is just a side effect.)

If I had my time over, I would definately go with C, but as I say, this was after 5 mins of running-thinking and who knows what would have happened if I reacted in the heat of the moment?

Anyway, only made it to 7km today with a little waking in the last kilometer. Quite deflating for my confidence, but I have many excuses like, It was too hot (idiot didn't take his camelbak) and I was dehydrated and tired. I was going to have a rest week with fewer kilometers this week anyway.

Recovery, Recovery, Recovery

I did manage that 4k this morning. Getting out of bed was tough this morning, the legs were not keen but the brain said..slow 4k is just the ticket so I set off and averaged a little over 7min/km. Now that is 1min/km slower than a normal 4k but I didn't over do it and hopefully my legs will thank me for it Sunday on a long run.

Still haven't decided on which half marathon I will be aiming for but a thread on coolrunnings alerted me to the fact that there may be cut-offs half way for slow runners. This may need further investigation but it is only Adelaide and the two halfs I am looking at are along the torrens mainly so not many road closures so I think I should be pretty safe.

Steel Springs

Ah, memories of the famous Aussie movie, that's what my legs felt like this morning on a 5k run. The first 3 kms were spent in a relaxed jog (my legs felt like tightly coiled springs), about 6:50mmin/km then at about the 3 K mark those steel springs released and I powered home with a pace of 5min/k over the last kilometer. Now it still felt relaxed and this might be due to the fact that the last 2k was downhill with a tailwind, but damn it felt like I was flying.

Anyway, back to training, aiming for 100k this month. Probably extent my 2.2k run tomorrow out a bit...maybe to 4k. See how I feel in the morning.