my routine appears to have gone out the window over the last couple of days. it may be due to doing parkrun on saturday (then a rest day on sunday), whatever it is, it’s time to get back on track!
as noted above, sunday was a rest day, my food was pretty good (though I admittedly failed to log it on my fitness pal)
monday
sunday night i was restless, i woke a couple of times in the night and eventually got up about 2:45am. i had the day off work, and i knew exactly what i needed – a long run.
so i put on my trusty long run shoes, shorts & running shirt, grabbed a handful of gels, filled up a large water bottle, strapped on the garmin and headed off down the road.
as i plodded along, i settled on a route that i estimated would be somewhere between 21km and 25km. i toyed with the idea of aiming for 30km or more, but i didn’t think i’d quite manage that without a bit of a build up. in recent times I’ve run 21km or thereabouts in difference configurations, but the past few weeks have been more about faster runs over shorter distances. common sense prevailed, 21-25km it was…
and i loved it, every single second of it. it was exactly what i needed. strangely, i ran with music the whole way (something i haven’t done since june), but it blocked out the sound of monday morning traffic perfectly.
in the end i ran just under 24km in 2 hours 51 minutes. average pace was 7:13 per km. with a proper training program, preparation and tapering, maintaining 7:06 per km over 42.2km seems very doable, which means the sub-5 hour marathon is definitely on the cards. in fact i think i’m going to surprise myself when the training begins in february!
the day was rounded out in the evening, by completing the daily core routine and week 5, day 1, column 3 of the hundred pushup challenge.
my fitness pal links for monday – food and exercise
tuesday
i can’t recall whether it was monday night or tuesday morning, but it dawned on me at some stage that a long run probably wasn’t the best thing to do the day before a 1km repeats session. especially when the target pace for each repeat was 5:00 per km, and there were 5 of them…
and that’s exactly what i had scheduled for tuesday morning’s run around the swan river with my work colleague and running buddy, jamie.
it was a horrid, horrid session. i could feel how tired my legs were just doing the warm-up, and it took a lot of effort to complete even the first fast km. i struggled to keep the pace to 5:15 over most of that first km, the second and third i worked hard to keep under 5:30.
the fourth repeat saw a mini meltdown in the first half. i felt sick. my head was throbbing and thumping. i slowed right down. fortunately i recovered, got a bit of a “second wind” and picked up pace a little towards the end of that km.
for the fifth repeat, i was basically happy to hold a pace under 6 minutes per km! i was running on legs of pure lead at this stage, and really just wanted to survive!
once that was done, i walked for a while, before completing the last couple of kms with a mixture of walking and running. i was completely spent. it had been horrible.
i got back to the office building, had a shower, swapped my running clothes for business-wear – by the time i got to my desk, i felt great!
the session was horrid, but i was glad i did it, felt great afterwards, and probably learned a lesson about not doing a long run the day before speedwork..
the day was again rounded out with the daily core workout – and food was pretty good.
my fitness pal links for tuesday – food and exercise
wednesday (today)
ah, so now we are caught up!
i woke up around 3am this morning, and headed to the gym for a very light session. after putting my legs (and body) through so much in the past few days, I figured they deserved a break. rather than take a complete rest, i opted to go ahead with my regular cross-training day, especially as i was keen to see if there had been any major shift in the weight.
it seems the weight is still heading in the right direction, but the process has slowed a little (temporarily i hope!)
another 200g gone, taking me down to 111.6kg
if i’m lucky, i may be able to crack 110kg by the end of the year – not quite the 100kg i set as a goal, but still significant, and would take the total weight loss over 2 years to at least 32kg (that’s 70.4 pounds for those using old money).
apart from that i put in an easy pace 5km row (about 26 minutes), just to get the blood pumping and burn a few calories, followed by a bit of stretching.
03:00 – gym
04:15 – breakfast (including usual vitamins etc.)
05:25 – bus, nap
06:15 – coffee
11:30 – lunch
14:15 – bus, nap
16:00 – push-ups & core (hundred push-up challenge, week 5, day 2, column 2 – by error, should have been column 3!)
18:00 – dinner
20:30 – glass milk, night-time multi & fish oil capsules. bed
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