Having A Cruisy Time

I am having a really cruisy time at the moment. That is with my fitness… In other areas of my life it is a trifle chaotic as we are busy moving cities and house hunting is proving a little bit of a challenge as the Auckland housing market is so ridiculous at present. We have seen a few places we like only to have them whipped out from under our noses at auction, and everything goes to auction…very frustrating. Anyway, I digress….

I guess in light of what is going on with my general life it is a good thing my fitness regime and in particular my running training is a bit more laid back at present. I do not have a specific race goal right now so I am just training for fitness. The other day I got back onto my bicycle, something I have not done in months, and pedalled into town to train my early morning clients. I experienced a new rush from doing something different. I came home a bit saddle sore but happy and invigorated.

 

I am going to do this again later in the week, gives the legs a break from all the running and makes me run faster. My time has dramatically improved now that I am not doing those looooong, slooooow runs anymore. The best thing is I have my mojo back which makes me even more determined to stick to the half and 10K distances. I really am not built for marathons!

So my next race goal will be something shorter but just as challenging and in the meantime I shall just keep on enjoying the relative freedom of general fitness training.

 

A Long Silence

This last marathon I ran seems to have temporarily sapped my love of running. Perhaps I was not even in the right head space before I ran the race. Although I had a beaming smile afterward, I think it was more of a relief reflex than a feeling of accomplishment. Whatever, it has taken me until today to fall back in love with running, which is probably why I have been so quiet. Every time I thought about sitting down in front of the computer and writing a post, my energy levels plummeted because I had nothing that felt interesting to share.

This short journey has highlighted to me the importance of the mind and exercise. It is so easy to talk oneself out of doing something, or to tell oneself that it is much harder than it really is, or even to think “I am not enjoying this anymore”. It has highlighted to me the minds ability to talk nonsense to the body.

And so today, as I headed out for my run I suddenly popped out of the negative state and decided I felt good and could do more. Which is what I did, I ran further than I had planned and I enjoyed every minute of it, even though it was freezing cold to start and I was running into a head wind. And when I finished I felt good, and the feeling of accomplishment came back, and I am ready for what tomorrow will bring.

Post Marathon Thoughts

My week on the Gold Coast has come to an end and I am sitting at the airport waiting to fly home. I don’t think I am suffering from post marathon blues as such, but I am feeling as if nothing really happened of a phenomenal nature. Or perhaps that IS the blues?

I haven’t been analysing the race and my slower time, I haven’t really thought about it much. Am I putting it on the scrap heap because I feel I didn’t do as well as I wanted, or am I honestly not worried about my performance on the day? It’s a strange feeling.

I went for a walk/jog yesterday and discovered my legs were tired, they felt heavy and blobby. I only ran a short distance while I was out, I walked most of it, maybe I ran 1km out of the 4km I did. I don’t remember feeling like this after the Auckland Marathon, but then again maybe I did.

When I get back home, I need to set a goal, I don’t have one yet. Perhaps that is the problem.

A Slight Hiccup

I have had a slight hiccup which could put paid to my race. In the early hours of Tuesday morning I was bitten by a white tail spider while asleep in bed. By yesterday afternoon the bite looked horrible and so I went to A&E. Short story is I have had two doses of IV antibiotics and come away with oral antibiotics to take as well. I have an itchy, sore, blistered thumb with an enlarged lymph gland in my armpit. It appears as if it is getting better, hopefully it will be okay by Sunday. Here is a picture…..bit gross really!

 

You can see the fang marks!

The doctor said running on antibiotics should be fine as long as the infection isn’t too bad so I’ll have to see what happens in the next two days. Tomorrow we leave for the Gold Coast, so depending on how it goes I do the marathon, drop to the half or don’t run at all…..

No Matter How Slow…..

Oh my goodness! Why do all my short easy runs feel so hard? I have no problem doing the longer, or should I say mid distance runs, those 11 to 16km distances. But put me in front of an 8km or 6km and I falter. It’s really strange.

Today was an 8km easy day. It took me just over 50mins and felt like a bad day at the dentist.

I guess the upside of all of this is I have no niggles or sniffles, so all is well with my training. It must just be one of those mind things again….

Poised At The Bottom Of The Hill

Today I got wet…well I should rather say soaked! I had about one hour left of my long run (today was 24km) and the rain came down. At one stage it was quite painful! Stoically I kept going, the result being I ran too fast once again, and I was dripping, sloshing and squishing by the time I finished and reached the shelter of my hubby’s car. I did think to myself that had I been doing next Sundays run of 35km, I may have given up…or would I?

Today also marks four weeks to go until the Gold Coast Marathon. Finally I am feeling excited. Due to the weather (it has not stopped raining since 9am!) I have been preparing my taper and subsequent carb load by entering all the relevant information into my training sheet. It feels good to have it all down on paper so it’s out of my head, which leaves room for other thoughts. Like the fact that I am poised of the eve of my biggest training week ever! This week marks an 81km week culminating in the 35km long run on Sunday.

Now, if you have been following my blog since last year, you may remember that at this stage in the build up to the Auckland Marathon I became ill and had to miss out the 35km planned run, so I never did the big week and long run, and consequently I am feeling a little apprehensive about my body’s ability to cope with the (in my mind) massive mileage. No doubt I shall be fine, but I am nonetheless nervous about it. What helps me though, is the knowledge that after that the taper begins, and so the next big run is the race itself! All I have to do is get through this week and all will be fine. I feel like I am poised at the bottom of a steep hill, looking up to the top where Sundays run lurks, and then on to the other side where the taper is waiting until the final climb of the race and the ultimate relief of the recovery week.

Head Games

Yesterday was the second planned 32km run in my training program in the lead up to the GC Marathon. After the previous week I was mildly dreading it (if you can mildly dread something).  I got out of bed to have my breakfast and was not in the mood at all to run. It is not something that happens to me often, so I am thinking I really do not enjoy the long training hours you have to put in to run a marathon. Needless to say, I am committed, so I will see this through.

The temperatures have dropped considerably, and they are not consistent. It is difficult to gauge whether  the sun will come out/stay out or if the wind will pick up. This makes it difficult to decide what running gear to wear. Yesterday looked as if it was going to be sunny, but the temperature reading for outside was only 7 deg C, so I put on a long sleeved running top. I am very glad I did that, for as the morning progressed, the sun disappeared and it got colder. At least it didn’t rain….

The first part of my run went really well. I was feeling fresh and strong and enjoying the view as I had taken a different route to avoid a race being held at my normal finishing spot. Unfortunately my foot started troubling me again, and I am now wondering if it is my shoes, as it only seems to happen in that one pair when I reach about 45mins into my run. It is something I will have to figure out this weekend when I use the other pair for my long run. Even though it was hurting I was still feeling upbeat until I reached that magic time mark (just past 2hrs 30min) where I started to get slower and slower and question my sanity. Whether it was a factor of my sore foot, or just that “I am over this” attitude, or a combination of the two, there it was, looming over me like a little black cloud as I ran down the road. And once again I had to talk to myself quite sternly to get myself going again.

As I neared the end of the run, it felt like I had not run the distance I needed (it turned out when checking MapMyRun I had messed up somehow and added about 1.5km in a backwards and forwards move on one street when I plotted my route the day before) but by then my shin had started to hurt quite a bit (no doubt as a result of my foot being sore) and I decided to call it quits and walk the rest of the way home. In the end I ran 30.5km and I am quite happy with that.

I still have one more very long run to do before I taper down to race weekend. I am going to have to employ all sorts of positive mind games on myself before I tackle it. The frame of mind I am in right now is not the best for self motivation. I keep telling myself this time, 5 weeks from now, I will be basking in the self-appointed glory of finishing my second (and last!) road marathon.

Trying Not To Grump

It’s one of those autumn days when the weather changes about 52 times in an hour – sun, grey, rain, sun, grey, rain etc etc. I don’t do well with the grey bit, so the whole day I have been feeling happy, feeling grey, feeling happy, feeling grey, until I nearly drove myself silly! So I decided to do something positive, I cleared out my old financial/tax records prior to seven years ago. Doing this made me feel quite light, whether it was the activity of sorting through stuff and physically tearing papers to shreds, or just the fact that I was getting rid of things. Throwing out stuff always makes me feel lighter.

I did go for my training run this morning, 11km with 6km at marathon pace. The sun was out for most of my run and it made me feel energised, as doing some physical activity, especially in the sun, always does. But I find that for whatever reason, the feeling is not very long lived if the day is grey, and I soon find myself feeling grey and grumping about the place. Perhaps it’s because I am originally from Africa where it is warmer and sunnier for more of the year. I can remember having these feelings during winter over there, but that grey part of winter was never very long.

I guess in the cavemen times, people naturally slowed down and did less in the colder months, and these days we are expected to carry on regardless. Perhaps that’s why the medical world has coined all these new ailments, like SAD. Perhaps we are not SAD but just in tune with the seasons and having an inner conflict with what is expected of us in this modern world. It leaves me wondering if I should slow down in the colder seasons, rest more and let my body rejuvenate for the spring. But that would mean no long races during winter or spring as I wouldn’t be able to put in the training needed to accomplish those goals. This year I have committed to the GC Marathon in July, so I shall soldier on, but perhaps next year, just perhaps, I may schedule my running training a little differently.

Share Nicely Please

Today I went for my final hill run in this training schedule. From next week I will be doing hill repeats and ten km repeats as well as some Yasso 800s. I am looking forward to not doing the long hill runs…..they tire me out. I got back today, ate something and gradually felt sleepier and sleepier as the day went on. I did push it a bit though, as last week I seemed to have run really slowly, and I need to up the ante for the race. Anyway, I digress….

While I was out for my run I came across a woman walking her dogs. Now I have to give you some background to my reaction so you can understand where I am coming from and why. Across the road from us lives a family who owns two schnauzer dogs. They look like this:

 

Our neighbours ones are very badly behaved, they howl, bark, chase you in the street, wander around and crap everywhere, chase my cats on our property,they are generally a nuisance. We have repeatedly rung the council to complain about them, letters have been sent, warnings issued, owners physically spoken to…..none of which has worked very well. We have given up and I have vowed to drop kick either of them if they come near me or my cats again. Now don’t get me wrong, I actually like dogs, but these dogs are different.

While out running I have often come across people walking these schnauzer dogs. I have noticed three things about them. Firstly  they always seem to come in pairs. Secondly, one of them always seem to make a rush at you. Thirdly, the owners often seem to like walking them without a lead. And so we get to today….the lady in question had two schnauzers off leads, one of which made a dash at me while I was running past. I passed her twice, so it happened twice. I did not hear her call to her dogs, I did not hear her apologise for their behaviour, I did not see any leads. I have a real problem with all of this.

I am on a public walking path, council bylaws say a dog should be under control in public. This is not under control. When a dog rushes at you, you have no idea if it is about to take a chunk out of your ankle or if it is merely being nosy. The owner may know, but you do not. What on earth goes through their brains to not even call their dog to heel when their are other people about. Or put it on a lead if it has self control issues? I did not get bitten thank goodness, but I did nearly trip over the dog twice, and shouted some choice expletives over my shoulder at the owner, which felt quite good.

I really think dog owners should think a little about sharing of the pathways….we do not want your dog rushing up to us, we do not want to be tripping over a lead 5 kilometers long. Keep your dog under control please…oh! And yes! Pick up after it!

Just for fun!

I know this has nothing to do with running, or health, well maybe mental health…..but I saw this today on Facebook and had such a laugh I had to share it here as well.