An exultation and a whinge

Desperately trying to stay awake... Don't know how long I'll last :-)

After last week's prevarications regarding how hard or easy to take things, there was no question this week - it was full steam ahead. As I once again didn't have access to the car on Tuesday morning, water running was out, so it was back to the local oval for 4 x 1460m reps. The times were consistent enough (6:02, 6:14, 6:10, 6:10), but the rescovery breaks just got longer as time wore on (96 s, 143 s, 172s). Must watch that next time.

Wednesday's run was one of the good ones. My normal 14k loop (which has some nasty hills) was cut slightly short by an ungent pit stop, but I did the 13.5k at an average of 5:02.

Run Club on Thursday was a lactate session. Alternating between Tim's "mini 6 ft" track at an easy pace and running hard on the time trial course, we did
1x lap 6ft (1k26m) (unknown time)
1x 940m (3:38)
2x laps 6ft (6:15 & 6:19)
1x 940m (3:37)
1x lap 6ft (5:50), which included a final 470m in 1:39!
I was very pleased that I could pull out that final sprint at the end of the evening.

Earlier in the week, tiger angel had noticed a problem with her gears during a spin session, and I diagnosed a bent gear adjuster thingy (that's the technical term), so she took it back to the shop this afternoon. As expected, the adjustment was quickly done, and then the mechanic mentioned that the seat post was damaged and that it "would have to be replaced some time". It turned out that "some time" meant "before the bike could be ridden again" so it had to be done on the spot. Lesson learned? Don't have carbon fibre seat posts. One very low speed bingle (caused by some woman who hasn't mastered the art of looking before turning in the middle of a large pack), and we're down $220. [[mumble, grumble, mutter]]

Anyhow, on to happier things. I lined up for the CR 5k challenge on Saturday with Evie & Johnny Dark and a few others (except that Evie and I were chatting to Uncle Dave up the back and missed the start by about 10 seconds. Oops :-)). Would have been a pb morning big time if it wasn't for the howling sou'westerly that was in our faces for 4 of the 5 k. The splits tell the story.
4:12
4:19
4:19
4:05 <- this was the sheltered k, and our normal speed
4:11
Enormously hard work, adequately recompensed by a slap-up breakfast in Leichhardt :-) Chunderbolt did a pb for the year (I'll bet that was the only pb of the day) and JD showed that he is gunna whip his pb next month!

Finally, on Sunday morning I headed for the Star run starting at Drumoyne Rowers. Alas, in the absence of ORunner's firm hand, and with the addition of a couple of 6:20am runners, the 6:10 group just went off at an insane pace. The first 8k were 5:12, 4:44, 4:42, 4:42, 5:04, 5:02, 4:43, 4:33 (this group is supposed to be doing 5:30). At this stage, it occurred to me that doing a long run and breathing like that were not mutually compatible, and I dropped off the back to run the next 5k on my own. At the bottom of the Gladesville bridge, I caught up with some 6am runners and stuck with them for the rest of the day (29k all up), and it was the best thing that I could have done. For a start, the bloke that I chatted to for most of the rest of the run is a dual 6 footer with a 3:20 marathon to his credit and times for the 10k & half not too far from mine. He said that he'd tried to run with the 6:10 group a number of times, but that he'd never managed to stick with them, and now he always just ran at 6am.

The run from there was great. It was a really good pace, we finished the 29k in under 2:30 and we did the last 4 k at 5:10 pace, so there was still plenty of juice in the tank. Just the way a long training run should be. That's my last attempt at 6:10. Looks like I'm going to have to get out of bed 10 minutes earlier from now on :-)

Tiger angel's day was even better. She had "one hour Walk/Run" on the program, so she ran over 7k, interspersed with 1.4k of walking. That's by far the longest that she's run for a year, and she finished feeling strong. Quake in your boots, you competitors - she's a'comin back! :-) :-)

Gnome

p.s. ...and she's gunna kill me for writing that last bit...

Woohoo Weekend!

Wonderful weekend in the tiger/gnome household! On Saturday, Macro and I went out to the air show at Richmond. For a person who loathes weapons of any sort, I have a very confusing love of aircraft, even when they are merely purpose built killing machines. Strange... I only took 146 photos. Here's my favourite :-)


Then on Sunday morning, tiger angel and I went our separate ways (if only briefly :-)). TA caught the train to North Sydney to join wildthing & Mr WT in the RTA 'spring cycle' event - a 50km ride from Nth Sydney to Homebush. This was TA's first time back on the roads in almost a year (and a very long year it has been...), so she's stoked that apart from a bit of a cricked neck this morning and some soreness from a bingle when a less-experienced rider decided to do a hard left turn in the middle of a pack, she came through it really well. Triple woo-hoo!!

The reason that I didn't join her in the ride was the Striders' half marathon at Lane Cove. As my near term goal is a massive pb at Central Coast, and as I haven't run a competitive half since last January, I wanted to use this one to give me a picture of where I was at. Super happy to do a one minute pb with a 1:37:47 finish. Yet more woo-hoos :-)

Then finally last night, tiger angel and I saw our lovely daughter-in-law (macro's wife) get baptised. A real fun-filled, special service. What an awesome weekend!

Gnome

p.s. for the sake of record, I ended up taking TA's advice last week and doing an in-between week - not hard, not easy. Tuesday I couldn't get to the pool, so I did a Mona on grass at a local oval. Wednesday was 10.6k at a 5:18 pace, and at Run Club we did a reducing intervals session - 2x 1380, 2x 920 and 2x 460.

Week interrupted (pt 2)

...so on Friday night we settled down to a nice quiet night in, with the kids off at a weekend camp. The plan was for a tempo 10k on Saturday, and then a long run up around Bathurst while visiting my sister on Sunday, but a phone call changed all that.

The call was from our eldest (Macro) to tell us that Micro was on his way to hospital, having dived into a too-shallow pool and hit his head. This completed the trifecta for us, as both Macro and Angel have in the past been taken from camp to hospital, in each case while skylarking during night games. Hence, I guess that Micro was pretty much destined to take the same journey :-)

Anyhow, the news is fine, and although he ended up with a night in casualty for observation (while I attempted - and failed - to sleep on the concrete floor beside his bed), the only real damage will be the possible loss of a patch of hair. (Oh, and that pink line to the right of the main damage is where they glued him back together! Who needs stitches?? )



I eventually made it home at about 10:30, and with the heat (and the fact that I was exhausted), I didn't even entertain the idea of doing my 10 tempo. Yet another run down the drain. Micro did go back to camp, so tiger angel and I were free to head off up to Bathurst.

Sunday morning bright and early, I headed off towards Mt Panorama. If running up it gives you a new respect for the way the drivers throw the cars around getting up there, running down does even more so. The drop down through 'esses' is sheer lunacy. From there I just wandered around the town, ending up getting lost and running through the only hilly part of the place (Llanarth and Windradyne) - it seems that my body is drawn towards hills, no matter how much I try to resist :-). All up, it was 26k at a 6 minute average - a fair bit slower than a normal Star run, but I was pleased to be still feeling strong at the end of it all.

So, I'm now left with a bit of a conundrum. This coming week is supposed to be my one-in-four easy week, but with the interruptions of the last two weeks (weekly totals of just 39 and 32k respectively), I think that I've just had my easy week(s). Do I stick to plan and take yet another easy, or just start the next cycle now?. I'm pretty tempted towards the latter...

Gnome

p.s. There's not been much mention of TA's progress in the blog of late, probably because she continues to improve slowly but unspectacularly. She's been working on re-conditioning her body, and is carefully starting to get back into the swing of things. Hence, tonight she entered the RTA Spring Cycle (50k from Nth Sydney to Homebush), which will be her first time back on the roads for about a year (there's been plenty of wind-trainer work during the reconditioning, so it's not total madness - I know what you were thinking :-) ). Here's to much more steady and unspectacular progress!

Week interrupted (pt 1)

Not exactly to plan... The water running on Tuesday was fine (5m warm up, 7 x 2min hard, 1m recovery, 5m warm down followed by 3 sets of 10 squats and lunges), but last week's lurgy was still making itself felt. On Wednesday morning, TA disappeared early to train some clients, and when my alarm went off at 5:50, I thought "I'm not feeling great. Maybe I'll cut it back to 10k" and rolled over. Later on, I readjusted to 5k, and eventually decided that I really wasn't up to running. TA arrived home about 9:30 to find me still there, and there I stayed... Her words of greeting were "you should have stayed in bed 5 days ago", and as always, she was probably right.

I felt *much* better by the end of the day, so I did the normal pushie ride and Run Club on Thursday with no apparent after effects. Run Club was Tim's 'mini-6ft', a 1.27k loop across a number of surfaces - 400m on grass, up a long concrete ramp, (walk!) down a couple of flights of stairs and then a flat bitumen loop.


I went out with Kar Soon (CR KSL) and Rob (CR Mr WT) for the first lap, having a nice chat, and then they cleared out. Splits were 6:18, 6:06, 6:07 ,6:08 & 6:11, so after the chat lap, it was all pretty even (pace 4:50). Followed with some strength work (lunges and hovers), and then we retired to the pub to celebrate Run Club's 2nd anniversary. Happy Birthday! :-) As we'd done some strength work on Thursday night, I excused myself from repeating it on Friday morning, which brings us to Friday night... (to be continued)

Of dreams and nightmares...

I've just been reading reports of the Melbourne Marathon and all the heartache and accomplishments. We're a strange bunch aren't we, the way that we push ourselves to achieve in the absence of any "real" reason ('real' in the eyes of the rest of the world, that is). We all have our dreams. The nightmare part is the preparation - you may guess from this that I haven't had such a good week...

I've been fighting off a bit of a chest infection all week. The water running on Tuesday went OK (followed by 3 x 50m freestyle in my own uniquely ugly style). Because of the time wasted on the swimming, I didn't get my strength stuff done. I have to do something about that. On Tuesday night I didn't get to bed until 2:30 am, so I used the lurgy as an excuse to not do the mid-week long run on Wednesday (and slept in instead).

Run Club on Thursday was a hills session - 5 laps of Tim's hill loop. I kept it pretty even until the last one - 4:37, 4:37, 4:34, 4:37, 4:47. Then we did a hills ladder - 4 cones up the hill, run from the bottom to the first 'rung' and back, then to the second and back, etc, up to the top, then working back down the ladder. After recovery, we did it again, but only working up. It all got a bit testosterone-laden on the last run, ending in an all-out sprint with yours truly getting mown down by the fast blokes. Ah well, I never was too stong on the testosterone front! :-) We finished up with 2 more laps of the hill loop, which after the excesses on the ladder were a little slower in 4:49 and 4:43.

Once again, I used the lurgy excuse to avoid my strength exercises on Friday, but I was (as always) looking forward to the striders 10k on Saturday down at Homebush. I have dificulties with the Homebush course, but I really don't know why. Someone suggested that it is because you can't mentally break it up the same as other courses and I think that has some resonance, but at the same time I can't logically see why that would be so. Anyhow, maybe I'm just preparing excuses.

I warmed up with CRs Evie and Chunderbolt, and then Evie and I wandered up to the 40-45 minute zone in the starting pack. Our aim was to try for a 42:xx (the lower the better), but we spent a good time waiting for the start practicing our excuses. As a race, it was a good 'learning opportunity' :-). We started a bit too enthusiastically, and died in the second half (4:17, 4:13, 4:08, 4:17, 4:19, 4:19, 4:25, 4:22, 4:32, 4:09). Evie dropped me at the 7k mark and gradually got about 10 seconds ahead. Thankfully, unlike the CR5k last week, I was able to find some reserve in the last k and pulled back her lead to only 2 seconds. She finished in 42:59 (a new pb for her) and I in 43:01 which is about 20 seconds over pb. I don't mind running times like that. You can't have a pb every time, and if I can be running in the same time zone as my pb, I figure that it's a pretty good run.

Finally, as if to wrap up a lurgy-ridden week, I tossed and turned all last night debating whether it was a good idea to run 25k with a chest infection or not. At 4:30 am I finally decided that it would be really dumb and that I should stay in bed, and at 5:10 I changed my mind yet again and got up. As it was, the run was really hard work and I'm still debating the intelligence of doing it. I know that they say 'that which doesn't kill you, etc', but at the moment I'm feeling like it killed me... Tomorrow's a rest day, and I'm sooooo looking forward to that... (cough, cough, splutter).

Gnome

Calf Stretch Ramp

TA & I have had a few people ask for details on the Calf Stretch ramp that I made (on our Physio's advice). It's really simple to make and well worth the effort. It is so easy to use - these days I do my calf & soleus stretches while I'm re-hydrating and re-fueling after a run. Nice time saver when I'm running late for work... :-)


Not much to it, is there?


Rear view, which gives a bit of a picture of how it is constructed. The basic dimensions are;

• wide enough to put two feet on simultaneously
• about as long as your shoe
• angle 30 degrees

In my case, that translated into the top surface being 220 x 295mm, and the vertical triangular pieces being 185 x 105 x 205 (all dimensions are pretty rough). The material was some 19mm MDF that I had lying around, but anything strong enough to take your weight would do fine (chip board or MDF or pine or even Western Red Cedar if you're so inclined... :-)).

The triangular pieces are glued and screwed to the main foot plate, and then I stapled and glued a carpet scrap that I had to make it nicer on bare feet. As it is, I never use it with bare feet because your foot slides down it, so the carpet is probably a waste of effort.


Here's an upside down view, just in case it wasn't already obvious.



Stretch the upper calf by standing with one foot on the slope, and the other either beside or in front of the board, depending on how flexible the calf is. Keep the leg straight. You'll feel the stretch in the upper calf just below the knee. (Much thanks to tiger angel for standing in as the leg model).


To stretch the soleus, put the non-stretched food back a bit, and bend your knee. You'll feel the stretch in the lower calf.

Hope that's helpful. I'd never be without it now. If I don't have my ramp available, I try to find a gutter or some other slight rise to achieve the same end.

Gnome

A good(ish) weekend

I couldn't get a car on Tuesday morning to get to the pool, so I swapped with Wednesday and did my mid week (14k) run. Ran at 5:15 pace, and it felt good the whole way.

I think that I'm starting to get the hang of the water running. I did another Mona fartlek on Wednesday, and for the first time I really felt pushed at the end of it. I upped the cadence a bit, but I also extended the leg stroke as well. Let's see if I can keep it going tomorrow.

Thursday night at Run Club was supposed to be 5x 800 (theoretically Yasso 800s, but it was really about 770m). I was ridiculously even for the first 4 - 2:56, 2:56, 2:56, 2:54, then on the last one I went all out and tried to keep with Rob (Mr WT). The idea was to see whether I was limiting myself in the pace I was running, and to see whether I'd do things differently at a higher pace (but being careful to not force myself, ie being careful to keep the stride reasonably relaxed). Anyhow, I couldn't keep with Rob in the last 1/3, but I pulled out a 2:32 which I was very happy with. No way that I could have done 5 reps at that pace though!

The CR5k on Saturday was great - perfect morning, lots of people, and after Thursday night I figured that I might be able to do a decent run. Evie was there, and we debated (very briefly) running off 20 minutes (our dream goal), but quickly decided to stay with 21 for the moment. We headed off full of hope at 3:58 and 4:05 for the first 2k, but couldn't hold it and did 4:08, 4:08 & 4:07 to bring it home at 20:26 (7 seconds behind pb). I was really happy with the time, as it's a while since I've been anywhere near there, but I was surprised at how dead-legged I felt towards the end. I didn't have any kick at all in the last k, and I don't remember ever having a run like that.

If I felt that I needed a bit more endurance on Saturday, I was absolutely certain of it on Sunday. The Strider's Star was my local, so it would have pretty poor form to miss it. Tim (Redback), JD, Tesso and I ended up doing about 25k together. It may not have been the toughest course in the world, but it sure felt like it on the day! By half way around, I was questioning whether a pb at Central Coast was even a remote possibility, but provided my body holds together and my training stays consistent, all that endurance will come back (and of course, CC is only a stepping stone...)

Gnome

p.s. wasn't it a grand game on Saturday? OK, the result was sad, but I reckon all the players in both teams can be immensely proud of the series of games that they've fought out over the last 2 years. Bring on 2007! :-)