Hot and cold
It's that time of the year in London whereby the weather one day is freezing and the next day it's lovely and mild. It's a bit like my attitude to training at the moment, some days it is great and on others (usually when it's freezing) I really don't look forward to it.
Wednesday's run was brilliant. We ran first think in the morning, to Chelsea bridge (and then Jo and I parted company as we headed to our respective work places). It was dark and cold when we left the house, but we still found it enjoyable. On our return from Chelsea bridge the sun came up and we were rewarded with a brilliant sunrise over the river Thames. It was glorious.
Thursday on the other hand was hard work. I felt very tired before the run and found it difficult to motivate myself. It was freezing outside, so I was glad I had planned to do the training run on a treadmill. I wanted to see how it felt to up the incline, so I reduced the target distance to 10k (instead of the planned 12k) but set the incline to 6% on the treadmill. You can blame John DiMeo for that (training blog link on the right) - as he did inclines of 10% plus when he trained for the TransRockies Run - so I figured we need to work up to that. A training plan that's cast in stone is as much use as a chocolate tea-pot, so expect more tinkering of the training plan in the coming weeks. Anyway, the training run at 6% incline was bloody hard - I had to take several walk breaks but I resisted the temptation to reduce the incline. I felt great afterwards - even though it took me quite a while to stop sweating. It's always a great feeling after the Thursday run because you know you have two rest days to follow :)
I'm trying to improve my diet in order to accelerate my weight loss, but it was difficult this week. Jo's parents were down Thursday to Saturday, hence we went out for a meal for (Jo's father) Dave's birthday on Thursday. I didn't have desert so that's a step in the right direction. Friday we went to see Mama Mia in the West End - it was superb (thoroughly recommend it), but I had a slight lapse as Jo and I polished off a tub of Minstrels chocolates (oh well, we deserved a treat!). We had lunch at The Horniman pub in Hays Galleria - I don't recommend the food - it was pretty poor. Later on Saturday Liverpool went and lost to Barnsley in the FA Cup. Bloody hell :(
Sunday's run was planned to be a 20k, so we decided we may as well do a half-marathon, i.e. 21k. We also decided to run to Greenwich Park so that we could do a little hill running. Again it was freezing on Sunday (thankfully not as cold as Saturday which I in my opinion was the coldest day of the winter so far), so we decided to start the run a little later (past midday) which gave us time to have breakfast and relax a little before the run. Really enjoyed the run although it felt a bit strange running east rather than our usual westbound route. It was freezing in the shade but gloriously warm in the sunshine - I love running in the sun :)
The return leg from Greenwich was difficult but that's was because mentally you feel you've got a long way to go before you get home (whereas if we came from Chelsea bridge then it doesn't feel so bad, as we tend to aim for one bridge at a time). In the end we did almost 23km (it was difficult to gauge distance while we were running in Greenwich). so we felt pretty good; it almost helped me forget about Liverpool's loss to Barnsley...still can't believe it :(
I had lost 2kg during Sundays run, hence in future I must force myself to take on more fluid as this 2kg translates to 2 litres lost in sweat. Incidentally we run with Camelbaks hence do run with plenty of water easily accessible - maybe I need to force myself to have several sips every minute or something. Also we've now got some SaltSticks; we'll see how we get on with these as a mode of salt (and mineral) replacement.
So in summary - training is going well, we're a little tired but we're getting into a routine. Thanks for reading - I hope some of this inspires you to do something equally stupid with your life ;)
Wednesday's run was brilliant. We ran first think in the morning, to Chelsea bridge (and then Jo and I parted company as we headed to our respective work places). It was dark and cold when we left the house, but we still found it enjoyable. On our return from Chelsea bridge the sun came up and we were rewarded with a brilliant sunrise over the river Thames. It was glorious.
Thursday on the other hand was hard work. I felt very tired before the run and found it difficult to motivate myself. It was freezing outside, so I was glad I had planned to do the training run on a treadmill. I wanted to see how it felt to up the incline, so I reduced the target distance to 10k (instead of the planned 12k) but set the incline to 6% on the treadmill. You can blame John DiMeo for that (training blog link on the right) - as he did inclines of 10% plus when he trained for the TransRockies Run - so I figured we need to work up to that. A training plan that's cast in stone is as much use as a chocolate tea-pot, so expect more tinkering of the training plan in the coming weeks. Anyway, the training run at 6% incline was bloody hard - I had to take several walk breaks but I resisted the temptation to reduce the incline. I felt great afterwards - even though it took me quite a while to stop sweating. It's always a great feeling after the Thursday run because you know you have two rest days to follow :)
I'm trying to improve my diet in order to accelerate my weight loss, but it was difficult this week. Jo's parents were down Thursday to Saturday, hence we went out for a meal for (Jo's father) Dave's birthday on Thursday. I didn't have desert so that's a step in the right direction. Friday we went to see Mama Mia in the West End - it was superb (thoroughly recommend it), but I had a slight lapse as Jo and I polished off a tub of Minstrels chocolates (oh well, we deserved a treat!). We had lunch at The Horniman pub in Hays Galleria - I don't recommend the food - it was pretty poor. Later on Saturday Liverpool went and lost to Barnsley in the FA Cup. Bloody hell :(
Sunday's run was planned to be a 20k, so we decided we may as well do a half-marathon, i.e. 21k. We also decided to run to Greenwich Park so that we could do a little hill running. Again it was freezing on Sunday (thankfully not as cold as Saturday which I in my opinion was the coldest day of the winter so far), so we decided to start the run a little later (past midday) which gave us time to have breakfast and relax a little before the run. Really enjoyed the run although it felt a bit strange running east rather than our usual westbound route. It was freezing in the shade but gloriously warm in the sunshine - I love running in the sun :)
The return leg from Greenwich was difficult but that's was because mentally you feel you've got a long way to go before you get home (whereas if we came from Chelsea bridge then it doesn't feel so bad, as we tend to aim for one bridge at a time). In the end we did almost 23km (it was difficult to gauge distance while we were running in Greenwich). so we felt pretty good; it almost helped me forget about Liverpool's loss to Barnsley...still can't believe it :(
I had lost 2kg during Sundays run, hence in future I must force myself to take on more fluid as this 2kg translates to 2 litres lost in sweat. Incidentally we run with Camelbaks hence do run with plenty of water easily accessible - maybe I need to force myself to have several sips every minute or something. Also we've now got some SaltSticks; we'll see how we get on with these as a mode of salt (and mineral) replacement.
So in summary - training is going well, we're a little tired but we're getting into a routine. Thanks for reading - I hope some of this inspires you to do something equally stupid with your life ;)
posted by Sat Sandhu at
12:24
1 Comments:
I´m really impressed with all the training you´ve been doing. Running on a treadmill can get really boring and it´s soooo tempting to keep looking how far you´ve run, even you put the TV on. Much better to be outside if you ask me (but what do I know!?). Surely it´s good to run when it´s cold as you´ll burn more calories? Salt sticks sound so very tasty (not) - perhaps you should try a South American diet, most things here contain loads of salt!
Bye for now
geeps
xxx
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