Just another week...

... in my dreams :-)

I'm on holidays at the moment, and purposely taking things very easily. If I feel like reading the paper all morning, then the paper gets read. I've had a pile of jobs that would normally get done in a day, but they've taken all week so far, with a fair few still to be crossed off. Poor old TA had to work all week (her busiest time of year), so no rest for her.

However, you'll be pleased to know that the preparation for Canberra (me) and for getting uninjured (TA) has not abated. Total for the week for me was 54k, and for TA was zero. Well, zero running, anyhow. She's done a couple of 30~40k rides, swum, walked and weights (I don't think that going stir-crazy counts as exercise :-). Apart from my Monday run with Mr WT, I did an 8k loop on Tuesday (5:25 av), 12k with Angela on Thursday (6:05 av), 9k on Friday (5:50 av, but 1/3 was on narrow bush tracks) and 17k on Sunday (more of that later).

I've pretty much settled on a pattern of maintaining 32k during the week (four sessions, two rest days), and building up to 32k LSD runs by early March. This may get messed up a bit when I move from endurance to the strength and stamina phases, but I'll worry about that when it happens.

Despite attending (and photographing) my Nephew's wedding on New Year's eve, and expecting to still be up at 1pm (expectation fulfilled), we planned on getting up at 6am and heading out into the hills around Cooma, me running and TA riding (and carrying water for me). The getting up at 6 turned out to be suprisingly easy, but we didn't actually get out until about 6:30 which turned out to be one of two mistakes for the morning. The other was heading south-east instead of north west...

The outward run was absolutely beautiful. It was calm and cool, and of course there was no one around. (I hate running along noisy main roads, so to run alongside the paddocks with no-one else around was bliss). Once we cleared the town, TA would ride off for a few k's, return to give me a drink, and ride off again. Keeping in mind both the time that we needed to be back and not wanting to push the weekly total too far, we decided to turn after 50 minutes. At this point, TA was some number of k's further out (and down hill) from me, and also at this point, that hot nor'westerly that was to leave everyone sweltering at 40+ degrees decided to roar into life. If I found it hard going into the wind, then TA found the combination of the wind and the up hill almost impossible. We finally met up again just on the edge of town, and rarely have I seen a sweeter sight than TA and her water bottles. The most pleasing aspect of the run for me was that I did both halves in even time, hot headwind notwithstanding. I think that TA was just pleased to be finished!

Today is rest (3pm and I'm still in my pj's!), so I'd better go and attack some of those things on my list :-)

sfG