Friday, August 22, 2008

Noosa bound and re-bound

I started this post in the Qantas lounge on the way up to Brisvegas and am finishing it in the Virgin lounge on the way back again.

Last Sunday I had a great run with the girls, followed by brunch watching the women's marathon and cheering for Paula and Bonita... the benefits of dual citizenship. This was my last long run before the 10km at Noosa and I felt pretty good, apart from the last hill back to Ellie's house when my friend Zoe (she of a shiny C2S PB of 68min) flogged me up the hill!

Mr lulu took me out for crispy intervals on Tuesday morning. Living out in the south western suburbs is very chilly at this time of the year and the grass oval was covered in frost. We did 6 reps of 400ms with me sticking to a sensible time of 2.10ish for each rep with a minute recovery. Felt quite good and this pace allowed me to focus on form rather than all out effort with legs and arms everywhere, but was still challenging.

After that, work took over my life again and I managed to slip in one gym session, a walk/jog with the girls from work that have just started the couch to 5km and a short hit out around the streets of Noosa yesterday with Mr lulu.

Today's race went very well and I am pleased to report a 2 minute improvement from the GC 10km. Gun time of 60:44 and net time of 60:38. Considering my PB is 60 mins dead that is not bad considering the ups and downs of the last 18 months. Now if I can just stay uninjured... fingers crossed.

I felt really good throughout the race; probably the best 10km I've ever run and managed a negative split for the first time. I think having the heart rate monitor was a great help as I had a good idea of what my heart rate should be and so I paid attention to that rather than the pace. Consequently, I didn't let it get too high in the first half and so at the turnaround I was in pretty good shape and I tried to run each km slightly quicker in the second half. Splits were: 6.09,6.06,6.09, 6.08, 6.08, 6.06, 6.06, 6.05, 6.02, 5.42 Judging by the last km I could have pushed a bit harder a bit earlier. Having said that I felt like I maintained good form all around and even enjoyed myself for a change, rather than really having to battle out the second half. All in all I had a good time and learned quite a bit from the experience.

Mr lulu didn't have such a great time as his training has been interrupted by two colds and two twisted ankles and he did the half finishing in 86.35, which is not quick for him, but still had in 7th in his age group.

I'm off to Melbourne now so I'll have a day off tomorrow before having a bit of a recovery week and make some plans for the next race.

posted by Lulu @ 7:17 AM 7 comments

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Nomads

Since my last post the builders have moved into the Bronte palace and we have been evicted to allow them to take out one of the bathrooms, take down the ceilings and generally knock the place about! We are hoping that we won't be out for too long but it will probably be at least 2 months.

We have turned nomadic, living with Mr lulu's mother during the week and relying on the generosity of friends ( mainly Vurt and Ellie) to give us a bed at the weekends.

At least this means I have some new territory to explore when I'm out for my runs, although the SW suburbs are certainly a lot cooler than Bronte first thing in the morning.

Running wise I have been pretty consistent despite the chaotic lifestyle. Since the last post I have done the following runs:
30/7 - 6 km
1/8 - 6km
3/8 - 14km
6/8 - 5.5km with 4km at tempo
7/8 - 6km
9/8 - 12km
Last week's Sunday long run was done with Ellie and we went down to Tempe and ran along the Cook's River which is very nice flat bike path along the river, complete with the remains of a burnt out car at one point!

I did my long run this morning so that I had plenty of energy to cheer the C2S runners tomorrow. 12kms around Centennial Park. I felt pretty good today and interestingly my av heart rate was 161 at an av pace of 6.27 which compares with an av pace of 6.50 for the same heart rate a couple of weeks ago.

We'll be staying with some other friends in Vaucluse tonight, just a short walk from the course so we'll see you out there!

During the week I also read an interesting book ' Run less, Run faster' - sounds like a great idea! The programmes are based on research conducted at the Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training. The programme consists of 3 runs and 2 cross training sessions per week. The runs are very specific, with one interval session, one tempo run and one long run. The theory is that you do less running but the running you do is specific for running faster and the cross training gives you the cardio conditioning without putting the extra stress on body. This really appeals to me for two reasons: I always feel better when I am running at a tempo pace - it feels easier to hold my form and I feel more stable, and second, as I'm prone to injury this could be a way of doing my training without having to do lots of miles which will possibly lead to further breakages. It's worth a try anyway, so once I have done the Noosa 10km race in a couple of weeks I will follow the training for 12 weeks and see what happens. The programme requires you to run very specific pace for the tempo and long run and you calculate the pace based on a recent race, so the Noosa 10km will give me a good indication of what pace I should be training at.

posted by Lulu @ 2:13 PM 6 comments