I seem to have moved to weekly updates to this blog, a side effect of writing a thesis during the rest of the day.
Monday was the club "run" session. Running was not the main activity, it was suppoosed to be simulated hill reps, and consisted of doing 40 squats, 125m sprint, 30 squats, 250m sprint, 20 squats, 375m sprint, 10 squats, 500m sprint. Then back down the pyramid. Did I mention the squats as a warm up and cool down? Well I'd call that a squat session personally, it felt nothing like hill running.
Tuesday morning brought the swim session. It went rather well for me. It was made up on the fly, but I managed most of the session before I felt anything from my shoulder. Plenty of kick sets and some 200m efforts. The afternoon is when Monday's squat session caught up with me. My legs started to hurt a fair bit, so compression tights on as soon as I got home, and slept in them overnight.
Wednesday morning and the compression had done nothing for my DOMS, no morning swim. Come the evening they had loosened a bit, but not much. Wednesday evening was a spinning session. Turned up to the gym 30 minutes early to run on the treadmill first only to find them all in use. Mostly with women walking on them. What is the point of that? Really what is the point of going to the gym, getting on a treadmill and walking at 5 km/h with no incline? Is there any cardiovascular benefit from it? I could rant for hours on this subject and my proposed solutions to the problem, but if you've read this far I don't want to bore you too much. Eventually managed to get on one for 15 mins before spinning, a reasonable 2.5km effort at 2% incline. Spinning session was good and my legs stayed loose.
Thursday was a rest day. Friday was the club swim session in the evening, after the 4x100 warm up it was 8x100 on 2:15, all things considered did rather well coming in consistently on 1:37/1:38. About 3-4 seconds slower than a month ago, but considering the volume of training I've been able to do it isn't too bad at all. Then following this it was 6x50m kick. My kick has progressed a lot and came in around 1:08 to start with. Was told to kick faster and slightly deeper and managed to come in on 1:06. Incidentally I was beating some of the guys in the fast lane, which was good to know. Some pull and a cool down and a total of 2000m at a reasonable effort with no shoulder pain at all. I think I may be able to get back to proper swim training soon. Only problem is I start my job next week, so can't swim in the mornings anymore.
Saturday was a sort of rest day, spent 2 1/2 hours walking to and around the shops. I'll call that taper training. Sunday was the Winchester 10K. I entered this last weekend as a few people were doing this, so as I'm not ready/have no time to do a duathlon next Sunday thought I would do this. Having worked out my projected pace of 12.5 km/h based on my half marathon time I positioned myself in the 43-55min start bin along with the others. The start horn goes and it seems lots of people can't read as I get stuck behind lots of people walking. OK it was a bit of a quagmire on the rugby pitch, BUT YOU COULD AT LEAST JOG. After 200-300m managed to get on the path and was again stuck behind people that were way to far forward. Dodged a few of them then came up behind the girls from the club who were running well, up the hill and out onto the road and my path was clearing. I was running way faster than my projected pace. After about 2.5K I hear a "that's where you got to" from Mark who ran up behind me, he overtook me and made it 10m in front of me, where he slowed down, or I sped up, but we stayed that way for about 5K. A few step hilly bits, but no much to report till the turn at 6.4K onto the dual carriageway. Something happened here and I could see I was slowly reeling Mark in, that spurred me on, and around km 7 I passed him and managed to hold on for a km. The hill took it out of me too much and my HR shot up to 92% and I started wheezing. Mark passed and I tried to get back on the downhill section. But that was possibly my undoing. HR spiked again and a more serious bout of difficult breathing. With him now out of my grasp about 20m in front, I pushed on for the last km. The finish was on gravel which scuppered any chance of a decent sprint finish, but I pushed hard with everything I had left in me. Crossed the line in 45:36 officially, 45:23 self timed from when I crossed the start line. 177/764 overall, but I'm not sure how much value a statistic like that holds.
That is it for this week, just realised I've written more than I have on my thesis over the weekend. %$^&. 12 weeks to half distance hell.
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