Quite possibly the hardest workout I've ever done

Ok, so the title is overstating it, it wasn't that bad, but it was a toughie.  First, apologies, I've been neglecting the blog lately, a lot is going on in life and I will divulge more at a later date, but for now, I'll update on my running.

Last week was a relatively low mileage week, then this week ramped up again.  I did 29 total, and have been adding in more and more resistance work, which is paying dividends in my running and my body shape :)

Tuesday was my 30 min easy run- I didn't bother with the cadence drills this time, mainly because it was so cold I didn't want the walking breaks between them.  Then when I got home I did resistance work that encorporated the strength programme in P&D as well as kettlebels.  I think I overdid it a bit on the kettlebels as my hamstrings were still sore on Thursday.  Suffice to say I didn't run on Wednesday.  Thursday, it was very cold again, so I retreated to the gym for a 50 minute hill session on the treadmill followed again by resistance work.  This was awesome, I had #willpower, will I am's album blasting in my ears, and was really pumped after.

Friday, I did the session I should have done on Wednesday, which was 60 minutes with 3 miles at marathon pace.  I felt really strong during the marathon pace section.  Really glad that I'm already encorporating race pace into longer runs.

Saturday, I had my gym instructor assessment and I passed with distinction for the preparation and merit for the practical :)

Today I did another workout form Jeff Galloway's book, which involved 2 mile repeats.  Galloway had a very complicated explanation of how he wants you to do this, but I simplified it to 2 miles at 8:10 pace , followed by 7 minutes rest.  The programme sets 2 or 3 repeats at this stage,  but feeling overconfident from passing my exams, I decided I would go for 5 repeats.  This would get me closer to the high mileage I was aiming for this week.

Reps were as follows:

Rep 1: 8:04 avg pace

Rep 2: 8:05 avg pace

Rep 3: 8:08 avg pace

Rep 4: 8:15 avg pace- this one felt like the first mile was all uphill and my leg muscles started to tighten considerably during this rep- ie fatigue.  I knew it wouldn't be sensible to push it any more, as I didn't want to get an injury, just for the sake of another rep.  My body was teaching me that lesson about not building up too quickly

Rep 5 ended up a jog walk at 10:15.  Still, I did 8 miles at faster than marathon pace, when all my training lately has been marathon pace or slower.  12.92 miles in 2:11:28, not bad given the 7 minute walking breaks!

Trumpeting elephants?

So, elephants are my favourite animal.  I even have a. Cuddly elephant with a lavender pillow belly that I can warm up to keep me warm in winter, so when I was planning my route for today's 15 mile run, and I read the route instructions about it passing close enough to Colchester zoo that you could hear elephants trumpeting, I was sold.

First I had to get to the starting point of the route though.  The route is here: http://www.essexwalks.com/walks/layerdelahaye.html#page=page-1

I figured it was about 3.5 -4miles from home giving me a perfect 14 -15 mile run.  When I got to Gosbecks road and saw this sign,

I assumed the starting point car park would be really obvious and on Gosbecks road.  I got my map out to try to figure it out an just couldn't see a car park, nor could I see it on my iPhone maps.  After much looking and trying to figure this out, a man came out of his house on the other side of the road and asked if he could help!  How kind!  I showed him the map, and he pointed me back to the main road.  I was only about 500m short of the car park.  He said that it was a lovely route especially this time of year with the autumn leaves.

I'd never been here before, but for a brief history lesson, Colchester is Britain's oldest recorded town and was a key settlement for the Romans.  As such there are many roman ruins in the town, and Gosbecks is an archeological site where a rather impressive fort, and amphitheatre were excavated.

I started on the run and took some pics.  Loving the crisp and brightness of the day:

In the next picture you can make out the tops of the buildings of Colchester Zoo.  I didn't hear the animals on my way out, but on the way back I certainly heard some exotic sounding birds:

I put the camera away and got on with following the route.  I passed a couple walking, sensibly in wellies and they told me it was really sloppy where I was about to go.  Having just passed through a muddy patch I thought it must be the same and nothing I couldn't deal with.  I was wrong though, this was the kind of mud that let's you sink in further than ankle deep and then tried to steal your shoes:

Had quite a few muddy patches to go though, and the route instructions were clear.  I gave in to the fact that those purple trainers I've had my eye on will now need to be bougt for my spring marathons and these relegated to just my winter training shoes.  I've probably already done 100 miles in them, and I tend to need to replace them at 300 miles anyway, so not too fussed.  At least they started off grey, so once cleaned, the brown they will become won't be too noticeable.

The route instructions were so good, they even described a path to the ruined st Mary's church, which is on private land, but obviously quite interesting.

From the Essex walks website: "The church itself is of Norman origins, with much of the north wall built during the 14th century. The upper part of the tower is Tudor. The church fell into disuse in 1598, and by 1768 was a ruin."

The next part of the run went to the Roman river and though the Roman River nature reserve.  Here I did indeed see some nature, I thought I glimpsed a weasel, then several pheasants, a heron, and of course a squirrel.  Nowhere near as tame as the ones in castle park though.

On the next part of the run, I got a bit lost.  I think the trees down from last weeks storm meant that obvious paths weren't so obvious, but I found my way back to the route, and ran past the pub they recommend as a refreshment stop:

Back through the reserve and back to Gosbecks park.  The sites of the amphitheatre and fort are marked out in the grass and there are signs up too:

Back to the car park and along the roads home.

This was a lovely run!  The parts in the woods and nature reserve were really muddy and so I had to walk quite a lot of it.  I managed to complete the 15 miles in 3 hours, taking on water and 2 SiS Go gels, one of which with caffeine.

29 miles run this week- it feels like I'm in marathon training :)

Becoming a fair weather runner

Lately, I’ve not been myself.  The stresses of life are getting a bit too much for me at the moment and the usual relief I get from running isn’t there as for some reason, I’ve recently become a fair weather runner.  After a fairly sleepless night, when the alarm went off this morning at 6am for a run, I turned it off and rolled over.

I’ve been thinking about this all day.  My goal of 1000 miles in 2013 is important as it means I can say yes to doing what I love, running, and say no to all those other things you feel you have to do out of obligation but have no interest in so doing.  So why the bail?  209 miles left to go and I want to make it a really tough challenge?

Who knows?  I have been getting gym envy recently.  I gave up my gym membership a year ago to help toward wedding saving.  When I spent the weekend in that lovely health club, it made me think about how I would like to be in that environment again, with the option to go for a swim, sauna or steam room for some relaxation.  What I really like about the gym is the ‘health club’ facilities, which is why I liked ROKO so much.  Unfortunately, the current nature of my working life means I only want to join a gym that has one near work and one near my home, which gives me a choice of LA Fitness or Fitness First.  How I would love to have a Virgin Active near my home.  I used to be a member of one a long time ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed the club- attending almost every day.

I’m curious about some of the classes.  I previously had thought they were for people who didn’t have any particular goals other than staying fit and healthy, and that they couldn’t be beneficial to my running programme, however, some extra muscular strength and endurance is surely only going to be beneficial for running a marathon.  Mo Farah’s recent string of success he attributes to being much stronger, so I’m going to try out Bodypump and see if it suits me.

Do I become one of those runners though?  I know that so much of what I get from running is about being outside in nature.  The sunrises, sunsets, rainbows, squirrels, changing leaves, rivers, other runners enjoying the country side.  Can I get the same from running on the spot on a machine that despite making it easier by having a moving belt beneath your feet actually feels much much harder because you don’t have the air rushing by you to cool you down??  I’m starting to think that the incentive of a swim/sauna/steam room after a run on the treadmill might be a much nicer experience than my mid-week runs in London after work have been.  Will the treadmill provide as many benefits in terms of fitness gains as the outdoors would though?