It's been an odd start to the year and my training seems to be reflecting that. Since New Year my work has been so hectic that weekday training has been almost impossible, this is despite the dreaded letter saying 'Times are hard, we need to tighten our belts and pay you less so overtime has to be cut.'. Since the letter I've been averaging 14hr days from Monday to Thursday so the weeks training hasn't started until a Friday when I get to do a paltry 10-12 hours. There has been another re-jig now though so while I'll still be hitting the clock hard on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday I'll be off work on Tuesdays which means training will be back on - if I can be bothered. Of course all this 'belt tightening' talk from work comes at the same time as our Vacuum and PC all but expire. Typical. It looks as though I might be thinking carefully about the purse strings when I decide where to race this year, a job that should already be done and dusted by now.
Today is the first race of the year and one that I can't really miss out on as the start line is less than 2 miles from my house. It's a 10 mile road race with 2 bad assed climbs in it, there will be no pb's run today that's for sure. I'll be aiming to get round without the excitement of last weekends run where I took a training pal round for a recce and got bit by a farm dog on the first climb. In truth it wasn't much of a bite and looked more like I'd caught the back of my leg on something, but it broke the skin and needed a trip to the quack for a jab just to be on the safe side. One bonus that came out of it was a chat about my everlasting cough and so I'm back in on Tuesday for a couple of tests. Basically I've got to have a spirometry ( if that's how you spell it) test to check how my lungs are working, then I'm off out for a 30-45min run and when I return I'm having another test to see if it's excercise induced asthma. I have my doubts about it, but it's got to be worth a look.
Back to todays race, the question as always is ' Do I run 10 or 20 miles?'
By the time anybody sees this then I'll have decided. It's a bit of a tradition that I run two laps here. As always I've the much bigger Grizzly coming up in March and this is traditionally a training run for it so I do a 10mile warm up lap aiming to get back as close to the race start time as possible, then I do a lap for the race. I'm not really in shape to do 20miles, but then I'm not really in shape to 'race' 10miles either, so do I risk suffering a torturous 2 laps or a disappointing 1 lap? Last year the warm up lap took 1:08:00 and the 'race' lap took 1:06:30, my pb on the course is 1:00:34 but that was from when I could run.
Right, time to get ready I suppose.
I'll edit the post and add my time(s) at the bottom once it's all over, unless of course something interesting happens and it deserves a write up all to itself.
PS - Oi Simeon!! Where's your blog gone?
After the race edit :-
Well it wasn't my finest day of running. I went for the 20, but it wasn't pretty. The first (warm up) lap was just awful. I ran exactly the same was as in 2008 and at exactly the same HR but I never seemed to get going. Finally I got back to the race HQ after 9.6miles (I cut a bit off) I was over 1:10:00 and the race was about to start. The race would have to start without me though (as normal) because I had a toilet appointment. Finally I was off on the race course 2-3mins after everybody else but my legs were actually feeling slightly better than the first lap. The hills killed me but I managed to drag myself round in an official 1:12:45 with a Garmin time of 1:09:40, just sneaking under the 7min/mile mark. It'll do I guess, a lot slower than last years double up and I finished in a lot worse shape. I wasn't expecting to go well but it's still a pig when you don't. Still there was pleasant relief at the finish with a bottle of Devons finest 10% Ale (which has now gone :) ).
I guess this means that race season has started.
1 comment:
Sorry mate, I had a big upheaval in my personal life and no access to a computer for a while (unless I walked to a county library). I had promised the wife I wouldn't do any of my "stupid races" in 2009 during one of our rows, so stopped thinking of 'blogging.
However, I find myself, just these past few days, now free to do what I like. This means I can do any races I want AND (oh joy of joys) save up for my dream tri-bike. It's going to cost about $5,500 so I won't be able to get it until I near the end of my skydiving season (Sept-ish).
I haven't done any training since my half, so am out of shape BIG time, but will begin a new base training phase soon and I'll post a new 'blog. Glad to hear I was missed!
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