Another year in the bag!
So that's the end of 2006 then. At the end of last year I wrote some goals that I wanted to achieve this year and a few have been achieved.
I managed to lose some weight, not as much as I would have liked, but at least it's going in the right direction. I think that some of the health issues that have plagued me for the last few years seem to be coming under control and I don't suffer from the fatigue that I used to.
Direct running goals haven't been so successful mainly because training was limited in the first half of the year due to injury, so 2007 is the year to achieve some running goals, namely getting my 10km down to below 55 mins and my half time down to 2 hours. I'm not interested in increasing the distance at this stage until I can consistently train for half marathons without breaking myself.
I'm a lot stronger than I was last year too, with all the strengthening, pilates and physio exercises I've had to do. Special thanks to Easy Tiger for being more obsessed with getting me back on the road than I was sometimes. Hurry up and get back from your holiday will you so you can fix my itb!
Mr lulu has had a great second half of the year and is probably running the best that he has in the 7 years we have been together. I must be looking after him well! (Maybe Sean has had something to do with it too.) His times over the half and 10km have really started to improve and perhaps his PBs from 10-20 years ago will get a shake in 2007.
So onto 2007 where my main goal is train consistently and build on the training of the last 4 months. I'm not off to a great start as I'm definitely carrying a bit of an injury to my TFL/itb but I'm hoping that it won't keep my out of action for too long. It seems I can run short distances until the TFL tightens and in turn tightens my itb. Lots of stretching and rolling about on the tennis ball is happening, as well as more glute strengthening. A short test run to see what progress is being made is on the cards tomorrow.
The highlight of the year for me has been the friends that I have made through running, CR and blogging. I used to do most of my running on my own but now most of my runs, certainly my long runs and SWEAT sessions, are done with friends and that has been great. Having lived in Sydney for nearly 9 years now it wasn't until I made all my running friends that I really felt I belonged here. Now on most runs I will bump into someone I know. Even better, I can travel all around the country and meet up with fellow runners for a run, lunch or coffee. I still have a hankering for Europe and my friends and family in the UK, but Mr lulu takes me back there often enough that I can deal with that.
So thank you to all of you I run with, email and exchange comments on blogs. Happy new year to you all and may 2007 be full of running, laughter, and PBs!
Anniversary SWEAT
What else would you do on your fifth wedding anniversary except get up and go to SWEAT training at 6.15. There weren't that many there to join us this morning, not even Sean. It was just a merry band of 6 of us that set off around the park. I tried to persuade Ellie that it would be fun but she wasn't convinced and continued on her inside loop.
All went well until about 6kms when my itb made itself heard and I walked the rest of the way in. Not too bad considering I was trying to pick up the pace in the surges. York Road hill was horrid as usual.
I'm going to have a couple of days off and see if I can get the knee to behave so I can start the year in good shape. It will be off to the gym for the next few days and lots of stretching etc to settle it down.
It's off to the lovely Kirketon Dining Room for our annivesary EAT this evening.
Test run
Christmas Day included my annual sleep-in. I didn't get up until 11 which is practically unheard of in our household. This included breakfast in bed, served by Mr lulu... luxury. He then did most of the cooking for Christmas lunch where we were joined by the illusive Don Juan and as well as the mother in law.
I decided to have an extra rest day on Boxing Day to give my itb a chance to sort itself. I'd diagnosed a tight TFL in the glute and after much stretching and rolling about on the tennis ball and muscle equaliser it loosened up and voila... no itb problems. That was the theory anyway and a fairly hilly walk on Tuesday presented no problems so I went out this morning to test it out on a run.
Apart from being a bit tender around the knee I had absolutely no problems with it all, not even on the hill on the way back from the park. I kept it short today, just doing 5.3kms as I didn't want to push my luck. I'm very relieved, as I didn't confess on Sunday how bad it was. My knee actually started to give way under me, was extremely painful, and I could hardly even walk at the end of the run. So to be able to run today without any problems is a major relief. Needless to say I will be keeping a very careful eye on it over the next few days to make sure no serious damage has been done.
Like a tourist
I headed out this morning to meet S from our squad and we decided to be tourists and do a tour of the highlights of Sydney. We set off from Bondi Junction, down Oxford St and through the domain. Then it was along the cove to the Opera house and I showed S the Hunter St hill that she'll get to know when she does the SMH half.
The hill back up Oxford St wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and then it was into the park for an inside loop.
Back up York Road and enough hills for this little blogger and I walked the last hill back to the car.
All up 17.5kms in just under 2 hours. One small niggle in the dreaded itb which I'm hoping is not going to get any worse.... fingers crossed as that would be one Chrissie present I don't want.
Have a great Christmas everyone!
The plan
As I've been away for most of the week, there's been no Pilates so I decided I'd better get up to the gym this morning and do a class before my abs dissolve into Christmas. I also had an hours run on the programme. So my plan was to run around the park and end up at the gym and do a class.
The plan went pretty well for the first bit of the run until I ended up at the Bondi Junction end of the park and still had 15 mins to do. In my quest for hills I ran down York St to Birrell St and ran up that. Well, I ran up most of it with a small walk on the steepest bit to re-gain my composure. It was hot and humid this morning so I finally arrived at the gym with a definite glow.
One flaw in the plan was that I was tired and so probably didn't get as much out of class as I could have done and I needed something to eat. I'll have to modify the plan if I do this again and maybe take the car up the junction and run from there. The other flaw in the plan was that the bus home pulled out of the bus stop just as I stepped out of the gym and so I ended up catching another one as far as it went on my route and then walking the rest of the way home. Needless to say breakfast of scrambled eggs and Marmite on toast went down extremely well after all that.
The hills are alive..
...with the sound of me struggling up and down them. Today's programme said 30 mins easy so why I decided to do the coast path I have no idea. I did take it fairly steadily on the hills and did a slightly modified version of the 2 beaches; down to Clovelly, up through the cemetery and then up Macpherson Street.
I've decided 2007 is going to be the year I conquer some hills. I've done most of my running in the last few months on the flat and around the park and now I've built up my long runs to 2 hours I'm going to make them a bit tougher. I just started my 2007 goal a bit early.
Sunshine!
I
've had lots of lovely sunshine this week as I've been up in that wonderful state of QLD. A day of work in Brissie on Monday and then it was up to Peregian Beach on the Sunshine Coast for a few days relaxation.
Some friends were renting a house near the beach and I must say I could really get used to the QLD lifestyle.. I like getting back from a run and cooling off in the pool for a start.
Tuesday I headed out to explore the area and found the backstreets along the beach to the south towards Coolum. Sadly, they ran out and I ended up on the main road, with no footpath so I backtracked and called it a day after 7kms. The good news was that my legs have finally come back to life and I was feeling more like my normal self. Maybe it was just the recovering running it's natural course or perhaps had something to do with the mega doses of Vit B I took, thanks to the sage advice of 2P.
Thursday, I headed the other way towards Noosa. I knew that there was a path for miles in that direction as my friend and I had walked the 12kms to Noosa on Wednesday morning. A nice and comfortable 8kms.
Now I'm back in Sydney, facing the approaching Christmas season, desparately under-prepared as usual. Good thing I've at least made the Christmas puds so we'll have one thing to eat!
The girls do the park... again
I was up at 5.30 this morning baking muffins for the SWEAT brunch that was being held after the long run this morning.
The Owl had come to stay on Saturday night so that she was in position to attack the park without a long journey from the inner west. Ellie was in charge of getting us all there as Mr lulu had taken the lulumobile to go out to SMC to race the 10km. We were also joined by S who runs with our SWEAT squad. Turns out she comes from the same part of England as me. Small world.
Despite Ellie trying to convince us to leave the park as she's bored of it we managed to persuade her that something easy and relatively flat was a good idea. So just after 7 we were at the park and ready to go. We started off with a warm up loop of the inside track, a toilet stop and then an outside loop and finished off with an inside loop for a total of 1 hour 40 and just under 15kms. Although I had 2 hours on my programme the assistant coach (Mr lulu) advised not to over do it as I'm not feeling that great. Not going to argue with that.
At times I felt like I was going to fall behind the girls and had to focus on keeping my leg turn over going, particularly on the hills. I feel like I've gone back months in my running which is very frustrating. The good news is that the calf was well behaved and we won't talk about the dodgy knee and achilles... I think I'm falling apart.
The SWEAT brunch was good fun and we had a very inspirational guest speaker. Dr William Tan is a wheelchair athlete who has completed marathons around the world, including the Antartic marathon. Amazing achievement and a great speaker too. His website can be found here
Finally...
I've managed to get out of bed and go for a run. After SWEAT on Tuesday I've been hiding in the gym, doing pilates and using the elliptical running machine. Friday I had a small over-hang from the meat industry Christmas party (I ate fish just to be naughty!).
This morning there were no more excuses to be had, and I'm scared of the wrath of 2P, so I headed down to the park to do an outside loop. Didn't feel too bad for the first half but started to tire a bit on the way back home. My legs don't feel great still. It's a strange feeling where I know I should be able to run faster but my legs don't seem to want to play and any hill feels quite mountainous. It's better than last weekend and Tuesday but still not fully recovered from the half. Hope it doesn't take too much longer as it's rather tedious!
Another 9.7 and an hour on the road in the bank. Looking forward to a run tomorrow with most of the girl posse (minus Jen_runs and Sekhmet) followed by the SWEAT christmas brunch.
Still here!
My legs were very stiff and sore after the race and my orthotics went off to be recovered whilst I was recovering so I had a few days of rest. I was back on the road by Friday to test out my legs.
The calf was a bit sore but not as bad as I feared and Saturday it was better than Friday. Friday I did 3o mins and Saturday about 45 mins. My legs were still a bit fatigued even then.
Today, I decided to try out my calf at SWEAT. I had four laps of the lake on the programme and managed one before my calf complained. I did another couple of laps at an easy pace which it doesn't seem to mind so much. Looks like some slow runs will be on the agenda for a while until it recovers. That's probably not a bad thing as I'm feeling very tired and am finding running very hard work at the moment. I'm not sure if it's just me recovering from the HM or something more. I'll see how I feel in the next few days.
Thanks for all the comments on the race. I'm feeling pretty good about it now and have a few things to learn from the experience. I'll definitely make sure I drink some sports drink and not just water the day before to prevent the cramping. In terms of training, I think what I was lacking here was more race fitness. I'd hardly done any races this year and only one 9km race in the lead up to the half. Mr lulu has decreed that I'll be doing more races in the next few months. I was hoping to start this on Sunday out at SMC but I'm not sure it's wise considering the calf issues so it will have to wait until that is fixed.
Still here!
My legs were very stiff and sore after the race and my orthotics went off to be recovered whilst I was recovering so I had a few days of rest. I was back on the road by Friday to test out my legs.
The calf was a bit sore but not as bad as I feared and Saturday it was better than Friday. Friday I did 3o mins and Saturday about 45 mins. My legs were still a bit fatigued even then.
Today, I decided to try out my calf at SWEAT. I had four laps of the lake on the programme and managed one before my calf complained. I did another couple of laps at an easy pace which it doesn't seem to mind so much. Looks like some slow runs will be on the agenda for a while until it recovers. That's probably not a bad thing as I'm feeling very tired and am finding running very hard work at the moment. I'm not sure if it's just me recovering from the HM or something more. I'll see how I feel in the next few days.
Thanks for all the comments on the race. I'm feeling pretty good about it now and have a few things to learn from the experience. I'll definitely make sure I drink some sports drink and not just water the day before to prevent the cramping. In terms of training, I think what I was lacking here was more race fitness. I'd hardly done any races this year and only one 9km race in the lead up to the half. Mr lulu has decreed that I'll be doing more races in the next few months. I was hoping to start this on Sunday out at SMC but I'm not sure it's wise considering the calf issues so it will have to wait until that is fixed.
At least I'm consistent!
.. and not just to the minute either. I ran the same time for this half marathon as I did for my last one, to the second! 2 hours 14 mins and 20 secs.
Things got off to a slightly dodgy start when Garth decided he didn't want to play and locked up. Jen was going to give me hers which was extremely generous of her but fortunately Minersrun was there to give Garth a good talking too and managed to re-set it. Thanks Miners.
So after standing around waiting for people to register and then doing our warm up, we headed to the start line. More standing around and it wasn't really the weather for standing around as it was wet and windy. It didn't bother me particularly(I'm English after all) but it was getting a bit chilly.
Finally, after some instructions we were off. I self seeded myself at the back of the pack and so pottered along. Jen was running just in front with the Owl and Caro but kindly came and ran with me until the turn around for the 9km race. We ran fairly consistent kms and I was feeling pretty good.
I waved Jen off (she went on to run a 9km pb) and a couple of kms later was where the trouble started. My left calf, which had a twinge on Tuesday after the track session, decided to rear it's head. Not too bad but just letting me know it wasn't happy. I figured as long as it didn't get any worse I could live with it.
I caught up with The Owl and Caro and we hit the turnaround. I got to half way at 1 hr and 3 mins which was a little ahead of my target. However, my target was clearly a bit ambitious as at about 12 kms things started to go pear shaped. Caro had headed off and then The Owl started to pull away from me. It was probably at this stage that I realised that not only did I have a sore left calf but now I had cramp in my right foot as well. I have never had cramp when I've been running before and I can't say I enjoyed the experience very much.
Now I was really struggling and it didn't seem to matter how hard I tried to move my legs quicker, they just refused or the cramps came back. My splits tell the story as I went from comfortably running at about 6.10-6.15 pace to a nasty 6.54 min km for km 13. I did have a short walk break in this km to drink some Endura and have a couple of Glucogel jelly beans and they perked me up a bit.
After that I just focussed on at least keeping moving and trying to keep the pace up, despite the voice in my head telling me that I should walk the rest. The little hill at about 18km actually perked me up as I tried to attack the hill but the left calf seriously complained when I tried to use the downhill to gain some momentum.
I was really relieved to see Mr lulu who had come back to do the last km with me and I realised how slowly I was running when he started running alongside me... he looked like he was only just breaking into a jog.
Under the bridge where we started and The Owl came to cheer me in the last few hundred metres and the rest of the girls were there to cheer me in. I tried to put in a bit of a surge to the finish line and there it was, the exact same time as last time.
Splits were: 6.09, 6.13, 6.09, 6.12, 6.11, 6.09, 6.10, 6.05, 6.14, 6.11, 6.13, 6.19, 6.53, 6.36, 6.33, 6.38, 6.44, 7.00, 6.47, 6.47, 6.01 (900ms). So, although the time was the same it's probably a little bit slower as the course is 200ms short according to Garth and most other people's GPS say the same. I'm going to ignore that for now though! I also conveniently ignore the fact that this is a much flatter course.
I'm a bit disappointed, as I could swear I'm fitter and lighter than when I did my last half but obviously lack the necessary endurance. I'm hoping the calf is not seriously injured and I have to have more time off. I'm sure Easy Tiger will enjoy punishing it for its disobedience tomorrow!
A big congratulations to my running buddies who left me in their wake. Caro, The Owl and Ellie all had fantastic runs and big PBs. Plus there were lots of other PBers from the SWEAT squad too.
And Mr lulu had a brilliant run finishing in 86.50 which is not a PB (which is somewhere around 85 mins) but it's the first time since I've known him (8 years) that he's finished in under 90 mins. It's great to see him running well again after last year's calf tear.
One thing I did achieve today was hitting the 1000km mark for the year, so that's something else to celebrate.
Easy Friday
Yesterday I went for my final tune up with Easy Tiger and he has prounouced me ready to go! My legs feel pretty good after a lighter week and the calf twinge I had after tuesday's session has not reappeared and is unlikely to after ET spent time on it.
So today was just an easy 30 mins and I wanted to stay off any hills as they tend to irritate my calves so I drove down to the park and did a loop of the inside track. I did a couple of the middle Kms at roughly my intended pace for Sunday which felt pretty good. That's it then, ready to go. I've got a busy couple of days and have to fly to Tamworth and back for work on Saturday which isn't ideal but I'm sure with an early night and some pasta on Saturday I'll be ready for action.
I've got a few goals in mind; obviously I'd like to better my current half time but at the very least I'm going to focus on running at an even pace, and focussing on my form in the back half the race when I start to get tired. Of course I intend to have fun too which should be easy as I'll have so many of my fun running buddies with me!
