It's almost like Spring is over here, and April hasn't finished yet. One section of my run takes me past a long line of cherry trees, and they've been in blossom for the past couple of weeks. It's been a lovely sight, especially when I catch them in the morning sun. This week though, especially Wednesday and Friday, the trees have been ditching the blossom and, as it's been a wetter week here, the petals have been drifting together to make little pools to drench the unwary runner's shoes.
I was only unwary once though.
On Monday, having had two full weeks of running at 30 minutes, I added on an extra 5 minutes, taking the route of "run for longer" rather than "run faster" which certainly seems the best advice at the moment. I'm getting pretty good now at guessing the target distance and then finding a new combination of side roads on map-my-run, so when Mr Garmin's alarm goes off when I reach target, I'm no more than 200 yards from my front door.
The run came in at 3.9 miles, so Wednesday and Friday, I just set Mr Garmin to alarm at 4 miles, to make it a nice round number. All the runs went fine, even the one with the wet foot, but my legs have been telling me to definitely take the weekend off.
I started wearing my heart rate monitor again on Monday, just so that I could start to record my heart rates again for future reference. It's not the cleverest of devices, but it gives me my peak rate and average for the run, which is OK for now.
Training for the week:
Mon: 3.90 miles, 35 minutes 8:59 pace. 11C (rain) HRAve:153 HRMax:170
Wed: 4.01miles, 35:41 minutes 8:54 pace. 11C HRAve:150 HRMax:168
Fri: 4.00 miles, 36:46 minutes 9:12 pace. 11C HRAve:147 HRMax:169
At the moment, I'm planning on just repeating 3 x 4 miles next week, but I probably need to start thinking about mixing it up with longer, slow runs. I have some reading material on this, and might start pushing up my Wednesday mileage, whilst using Monday and Friday to work on other things.
On the home front, I'm just about to change jobs, albeit within the same company, and disengage from a rut I've stayed in far too long. This shouldn't affect my running, although I do expect more travel to London. I'll just have to pick my hotels so I can run through Hyde Park or up The Mall for a nice change of scenery.
It also looks like we've finally got a school sorted out for my son next year. This has been a big source of anguish for us over the past year as getting the right placement for a very bright autistic boy in the face of budget cuts at the city council has been very difficult. My youngest daughter has been off nursery school with a bit of a fever for the latter half of the week, hopefully we'll see a bit of improvement tomorrow. My eldest daughter got a new Yamaha keyboard this week as an early birthday present and between gymnastics, trampolining and homework has been practicing away on it. I did give her some headphones so she doesn't keep us awake though ;).
Finally, today, 28th April, is my blogiversary. And my Runiversary, a whole year since I started out pounding the pavements. Here's to the next one then!
All the best.
Mr Stumble.
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4 comments:
Happy blogi and runiversary!! :) i really envy your increase in speed, i've been working over a year to run a sub-30 5k. nice work
(p.s. good suggestion on my blog regarding running in the morning and yoga at night, i may try that some time. The last time I ran early it felt a bit much like my heart wasn't ready for it, but i appreciate the thought it seems more logical)
So much going on with your life. First, Happy blogiversary. I still remember that you are one of the first blogs I found out there in the blogsphere. Also, great job keeping up with the 30 minute run routine. As you slowly extend your runs, you'll need to mix them up, else you'll get bored and have little to look forward to.
You know you are a real runner when you start selecting hotels based on where you can run. I do it all the time.
Have a great week and congratulations on your new position within your company.
It is always a good idea to change your routine up every few weeks. Best to keep it fresh so you want to move your feet longer.
Keep it up!
Hey found you off Phil's blog. Great site!
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