A bit of a break between week 4 day 1 and today. Had a medically thing- a two week long headache, essentially, and the Dr said to lay off training until he figured out if I was dying or not. Turns out he thinks I’m not, which is nice.
It’s a beautiful day out there, though I should have started a bit earlier as it got friggin hot on the back half. Still, long and slow with lots of water, and it’s all good.
My run is: here
I came down with a little something and had a splitting headache for 3 or 4 days, so my week 3 running was a bit of a bust. Back at it today with a 16km Sunday long run along Toronto’s lovely waterfront. Humid? You betcha. Sweaty? Let’s just say the Starbucks lady was a little reluctant to take my moist $10 bill, but hey.. a man needs his grande caramel light frappacino frappuchino iced coffee after 16 clicks.
Cool down time, then sit in the sun time. Long weekend, you are over much too soon for my liking.
My run is: here
I am so not a gym guy. I can barely stand using the treadmill and stairclimbers in the gym at my condo building, let alone the freeweights or the machines. But, man does not get fit on running alone, at least not this man. So, I’ve undertaken the hundredpushups.com challenge again to add a little something to the routine, along with the running.
I did it last March, and it really works. It’s a 6 week thing to take you from being able to do how ever many you can do, to being able to do 100 pushups in a row. I maxed out at 116 and then kind of fell off the wagon and just stopped doing them. Can’t remember why, to be honest.
Anyway, back at them and today was week 2, day 3. My sets were 16, 17, 14, 14, 61. So, more than halfway there again at the end of week 2. Lookin’ doable!
Man, it has been torrential here. Not like the floods that some folks have, but coming down nonstop for days all the same. So, I missed running on Thursday, had a scheduled rest day Friday anyway and missed Saturday. I therefore owed myself 14km going into today’s Sunday Long Run.
It was beautifully cool this morning, so I knew I was going to do more than the 13km my plan required of me, I just wasn’t sure how much more. In the end, I just kept going until the running path more or less ran out, and then I turned around. That was at the 11km mark, so I followed the same route home and ended at 22km on the dot.
My first first was that this was the first time I had ever run that far with no water. I normally take water or sports drink if I’m going to be running over an hour, but this one came in at 2:23:05 and it didn’t kill me. That’s mostly thanks to a nice slow Sunday run pace of 6:30/km, the fact that it was cool out and because I had hydrated a lot yesterday anyway.
My second first was that this was the first time I have ever been attacked by an angry bird. There were no pigs in sight, so I’m assuming I ran too close to a nest because out of nowhere something flew at my head squawking and shrieking, and clawed at my hair for what was probably only two seconds, but seemed way longer. Stupid bird. Startled the crap out of me.
Cold water bath once home to speed the leg recovery, now time for a pot of coffee and a nice relax. Hope your Sunday rocks!
Don’t you just hate not being able to upload from your Garmin while you’re away from home (#firstworldproblem)? So no map and you’ll just have to trust me that the splits on my 10k this morning were 6:11, 5:32, 5:26, 5:41, 5:39, 5:44, 5:38, 5:35, 5:27, 5:34. for a 5:39 avg.
I managed to get myself confused and thought I was ahead of pace, but it turns out I was looking at the 4 hr plan instead of the 3:45 plan. So, I should have been going for 5:30/km. D’oh. Oh well, what can you do. I’ve got an 8k on the plan for tomorrow, so I’ll just have to step that one up a bit.
On a side note, I think I may have well and truly caught the running bug again- I’m actually looking forward to my Sunday long run and wishing that it was longer already. The reality though, is that I need to focus on developing some speed! But, like the longer long runs, the Yassos and Hills portion will start soon enough I guess and you should be careful what you wish for ;)
My 18 week plan has Mondays as rest days, but I have to hit the road early tomorrow so I figured I’d do Tuesday’s speed work today.
I say speed work because that’s what it’s called, though I realize 8:41 isn’t setting the world on fire. Still, it makes a nice bump in speed from the Sunday long run. Funny how less than 30 seconds a mile makes such a massive difference in effort: I ran a United Way 5k last Thursday at an avg mile pace of 8:17, and was completely baked at the end. At an 8:41 pace I wasn’t struggling, wasn’t gasping for air and wasn’t wishing it was over the whole way through.
There’s hope for me yet.
Trailer for “Unbreakable: The Western States 100”, coming out in the Fall. A 100 mile endurance run…. man, I am so far away from that! At the moment…..
I thought today’s plan was for a slow 10k, but my long run partner suggested that instead of working off the complete-it-in-4hrs plan, we work off the 3:45 plan. So, the long run gets a bit longer a bit sooner, and the weekday runs get faster right away.
Seems doable, so instead of a 10k today, we had 13 on the plan. But, still nice and slow. 13 k (8.08 miles) done in 1:19:42, or an avg of 6:07/km (9:51/mile).
Thx for dropping by. Feel free to ask me something.
