Whispering Gnome

I'll apologise, but if you can't hear me properly it's because I can't talk. I left my voice at Telstra Stadium last night. 20 people on the Cahill was a pretty good cheer squad - 60,000 at the stadium was even better :-) Three Peliminary Finals in four years, two Grand Finals in two years. Not bad for a bunch of ugly ducklings :-) :-)

Anyhow, back to running. This week was the first of my soon-to-be-regular easy ones. As you'll see, I haven't got the discipline perfect yet. On Tuesday, I figured that water running wouldn't contribute to any damage, so there was clearly no need to reduce it. 45 minutes, comprising a 10 min warm up, 10 min solid pace, 4 x 2 min on / 2 min off, and 5 min cool down. I generally try to take the opportunity whilst I'm on the water to have a go at that swimming caper, and I generally die before 100m, regardless of how slowly I turn the arms over. I can run for hours, but my lungs are busting within 25m in a pool (and yes, I do remember to breath! :-) ). A friend suggested that I should use a pool bouy and just concentrate on the stroke. It had two odd effects -
a) I felt like my legs were just about dragging along the bottom of the pool. The bouy didn't seem to do much, and
b) I easily did 4 x 25 m without any breathing problems. Maybe I just kick too hard normally??

On Wednesday I managed to be a good boy and limit my run to 45 minutes (half in the bush where the Garmin won't work, so I worked on time rather than distance). On Thursday I couldn't halve my ride to work, so it stayed full length, but it was at Run Club that I let things get away from me.

We did a "rolling bay", where we run the bay in formation, with the last person in the line sprinting to the front ad infinitum. The first 3k were at 6 min pace, but then we were split into a couple of groups, with our group to cover the remainder at 4:20 pace. After 2k, I stopped to walk for 30 seconds with one bloke who had fallen off the back, and then set off to catch up to the rest, half of whom were heading up the Dog Park loop. I should have headed straight home, but instead I followed them up the loop at 4 min pace to catch up. Another 2k later, it dawned on me that I was supposed to be in a light week, and here I was doing things longer and faster than normal! Idiot. I pulled back and did the final 2k at 5 min pace, but 9k, with 6 of them averaging around 4:30, was not what the doctor ordered.

I was very careful this morning, only doing the old 5.5k loop at 4:55, and tomorrow I'll just do 10k. Next time I'll get it all right :-)

Gnome

No Iron(wo)man here.

Whinge news - Despite 5 months of Iron tabs and an iron saturated diet , the tests say the body isn't absorbing iron so I have to continue my little regimen for another 6 months!!! and then retest. I, also, suspect the endocrinologist will up my thyroid and insulin resistant drugs next week as they arn't quite meeting expectations either.

Happy news - I'm onto my third week of reconditioning and haven't needed daily painkillers during this time. Under strict instructions, it's to be very slow and real running is still weeks away. All year I've been lucky to survive my work day, so exercising, as well, was out of the question but the exciting thing was I felt good enough to go to the gym before work last Monday morning. I think we may be turning a corner...

Congratulations - To all the Blackmore participants. It has been a joy to read all the reports and hear about the wonderful runs, especially those massive PBs from all my Runclubber mates.

TA

Simple satisfaction :-)

The week went well, and the weekend even better! I haven't had time to blog all week (and I should be going to bed, but if I don't get it done now, then when will I??). Tuesday's water run was as boring as ever. If anyone can think of a way to alleviate the tedium, I'm all ears. I'm in for the same tomorrow morning. On Wednesday I was aiming for 14k steady, preferably without needing a pit stop. Ended up doing 15.5k at a bit faster than Sunday's planned pace, and no problems. So far, so good...

Thursday was the 25k cycle in the morning, and a 3k TT at Run Club at night. Not having run at speed since July 13th (9 weeks ago - I didn't realise it had been that long!), I didn't know how it was going to go. I was sure that the ankle was OK for it, but I had doubts about how fast I could take it and hold on. I'd like to say that I decided to not look at my watch, but the truth is that in the half-light of the evening, I can't read my watch if I wanted to :-). Luckily, Tim stands at the 1k turnaround and calls the splits. First k was 3:53 (quite suprised). Second was slightly slower at 4:00 (really suprised, because it felt like I was plodding). Final k was the same, for a total of 11:53. Very happy, considering the lack of training and that it was only 10 seconds over my PB. Gave me confidence that things were starting to come together again. On Friday I walked the dog around the block as a warm up, and then did 4 sets of 10 lunges (per leg) and 4 sets of 10 squats. On Saturday I just did a quick 4k to turn the legs over. (Actually, it wasn't supposed to be that quick, but I got caught short again(!) and turned in a rather impressive positive split... :-))


We were at my Niece's wedding on Saturday night, which wasn't the best preparation for the half, but as my only real concerns were a) would I screw up the pace and destroy everyone's race, and b) would I make it through without needing to stop for the loo, I slept much better than I normally do prior to a race (albeit for only 4.5 hours). I got to the start before 6am as planned, got the pacers flag from Dave, and went and stood in the toilet queue for the next 20 minutes. Starting to get a bit panicky about how long it was taking, but luckily Chunderbolt and Will were there too, which helped pass the time. Finally finished and went to put my clothes bag in, only to find an desperate crush there too. Total panic now. Heard the announcer telling everyone that they could start to move forward. So much for the quiet meet and greet and explanation of pace tactics that was supposed to happen... To make matters worse, my pace partner was nowhere to be seen. (Turns out he was in the same queues. He cought up to us about 6 or 7 k in, poor bloke).

The actual run was fine. I probably took it just a little slow over the opening 10k, so that by the mid point I was 30 seconds behind net time, and thus about 2 minutes behind gun, which wasn't exactly the buffer that I was supposed to have created. I wasn't particularly worried, because I personally felt that there was a bit too much buffer in the schedule (but I've always preferred to run completely even rather than plan to slow down - everyone's different, I suppose). Anyhow, I picked the pace up ever so slightly after the turnaround, and was pleased to see the differential start to drop by about 5 seconds each k.

As we got on to Sussex St, I started suggesting that people go past me and try to pick up a bit of space for the upcoming hill, and then when we got to the aforementioned mountain, I just talked them up each stage at a time (only one more light pole, and then it's flat for a bit. Just a short, sharp section, and then it's flat, etc. At the bottom of Observatory Hill, one lady made me promise that there were no more hills after that! :-) )

As we went into the corkscrew, I once again urged people to use the hill and run away from me (I told them "that's what God invented gravity for"). Quite a few took up the suggestion, never to be seen again :-). I'm told that the Cheer Squad was in place on the Cahill by that stage, but I was so focussed on getting the group through the crowd of walkers who decided to use the "1/2 marathon" side of the road that I didn't even see them (apologies if I ignored you). By that stage, we were on gun time as required, so for the last k I slowed down a bit and called people through, eventually finishing at about 2:01 gun (30 seconds under net).

After wandering around the recovery village for a while, collecting my bag, finding anything I could to eat, and failing to find the Run Clubbers, I headed up to the cheer squad in time to see Uncle Dave dancing (believe me, believe me) along the last k of his marathon. The time up there was, as it was last year, just as rewarding as the run. 2 hours of clapping and cheering is a small price to pay to see the looks on the faces of the finishers, regardless of whether they had run 2:30 or 4:30, especially as this time I had a bit more understanding of what they had been through and what they were feeling at that point. Marvellous!

And to top it all off, the nicest thing was receiving some emails today (via the striders) from people who had been encouraged by us, and had taken the time to look at the running festival web site to get the striders' email address to pen a note of thanks. People are so thoughtful. :-)

Gnome

Good with the bad

I've just had the greatest weekend, watching all four AFL finals (sheeting rain and cold wind have their uses) and seeing my favourites get up in every one. I noticed my heart thumping in the last 5 minutes of my Swannies' match, so I took my pulse. Would you believe, 120 bpm?? No one can say that I don't get emotionally involved :-)

Alas, the weekend wasn't so good on the running front...

Tuesday I went water running in the morning, doing a Mona fartlek and following it up with some shallow water (slight weight bearing) stuff for the fun of it, and then 3 sets of 10 squats and 1 set of 10 lunges on each side, holding the last squat or lunge in each set for 10 sec. Wednesday was 11k relatively easy at 5:12 pace; the only item of note was my old "bowel urgency" problems returning. Thursday evening, there were only a few of us at Run Club (where were the fair-weather slackers?? :-) ). It was supposed to be a time trial, but with the lack of runners, Tim changed it to an intervals session. A couple of us decided to do an easy run in preference, and so headed up towards the dog loop and a bit beyond. When I got back, those who had remained for the intervals were on their last lap of a 3k (they'd done 1k, 2k & 3k with drills interspersed) so I continued onto the course to find MicroTA who was back with us after the conclusion of his footy season. All up, I covered almost 8k at a comfortable pace (forgot the garmin, so I can't be more specific). Micro is still whinging about his legs being sore - it seems that his footy training wasn't as running specific as he might have thought!

Friday is a rest day, so TA and I walked for about 1/2 an hour or so. I was going to run on Saturday (really I was!), but it was just too ugly to contemplate. Things were much better today (Sunday), and I was all prepared for a nice 20k, but less than 4k in I started getting terrible stomach cramps. A couple of toilet stops helped a little, and I tried to tough it out (on the highly specious premise that I might be feeling crook next week, and I'd want to keep going then...) but at 8k I pulled the plug and headed for home. All up, 11k at 5:12 again - same as Wednesday, but much less comfortable :-(


I'm pretty annoyed that I didn't get the longer run in this weekend, but I'm more concerned that my gut is going to affect next weekend's festivities. I think that I'll head around my 14k loop on Wednesday morning to see if things get squishy again. I do so fervently hope not...

Gnome

Graduated!

Very happy with the last week. On Wednesday I completed step one of my recovery program by running my old 5.5k loop. I had the Garmin (of course! :-)), but I carefully didn't look at it at all so that I'd just run to whatever felt OK. I was quite surprised to find that I'd done it at 5 minute pace, which wasn't exactly to plan... Still, again there was absolutely no sign of niggles {{{relief}}}.

Run club on Thursday was a Hills & Drills session, so I just took it really easy and floated around (oh, and I had the 25k ride to work in the morning).

We hadn't originally intended to go to North Head for the Striders 10k on Saturday, but with running back on the agenda, I figured that if I was going to run 10k, then I might as well do it with 300 friends :-) The aim was just to take it easy and do about 50 minutes. Before the start, Andy (blkbox) said he was aiming for the same pace, so we ran together and did 50:30. Gorgeous morning - perfect spring day. Nat (Go Girl) floated along looking like she was strolling around the shops and pulled out a big PB. Kit was berating herself for her 'terrible run' where she only got another PB. Gronk thundered home for a beauty, and Steve (26) is getting scarily fast. I can't wait to see them all at Blackmores!

Sunday was supposed to be just another easy 10k. 10k it was, but easy it wasn't. It took ages to get into the swing of it, and I felt weary by the end. Only 5:25 pace, so I guess that it is all just part of getting back into it. Rest day today (Monday), and then into step 2 of the program.

Gnome