Ramping Up

Saturday - Felt quite unmotivated again, but dragged myself out at about 10 to 8am for 10.5k. The highlight was wandering off down a street I'd never been down before, and ending up in the bush for about 4k. Much nicer (though much slower) than plonking around the local roads. I love the freedom that the Garmin affords me - I can run wherever I feel like, and I don't have to worry about where I'm up to. I just keep an eye on it and turn for home when the distance is starting to get towards the desired total.

Sunday - We were out last night till after midnight, so I had three choices - sleep in and run in the evening, get up early and run before church, or get up even earlier and join the striders' Starr run at Lane Cove. The first didn't appeal because I'd be running both in the heat of the afternoon and the dark of night (2.5 hours planned), so the choice was between some company or some sleep. Given the way I've been feeling, the company won out.

I only arrived with a minute to spare, and discovered that a) I couldn't read the map because I don't wear glasses when running, and b) everyone was setting off at a relatively hot pace. The girl I was running with at the back of the pack assured me that it would settle down when the testosterone started to wear off (which it did after about 5ks).

I was aiming for a 25k run, and as one of the options was 26.0k, I took that. I felt fine during the run, although I had a tinsey bit of a niggle in my left calf, and later in my right shin. I'll not run till Tuesday night to give them a bit of a rest, and then I might stick to running on sand for a couple of days. I've been ramping up steadily for the last month or two, so it's possible that it's all starting to catch up with me. I want to be up to 32k long runs in 3 weeks' time so that I have the opportunity to do at least 3 x 32k runs (with shorter weeks interspersed) before starting taper. That's all fine and dandy, but not if I have to start running short weeks to nurse my legs through. At the same time, there's no way that I'm risking wasting all the training I've been doing since November just for the sake of sticking to some arbitrary schedule!

Anyhow, today was my longest run ever (soon to be eclipsed :-)), and also the first time I've got the weekly mileage up over 60k (in fact, 64k for the week). Time to drag the old body off to bed [Yawn]...