Bored Bored Bored

I am so bored at the moment. My last run was on Saturday and what a mistake that was. I ignored the signs of a cold a went for a steady run. Finished it with a very sore Plantar Faciitis and a horribly cold. Felt like death warmed up on Saturday and Sunday and I didn't stop limping until the Monday. Haven't run since and its driving me mad. I'll wander onto the tready at lunchtime and give it a go for a couple of miles, ease the body back into doing something.

Chiro is advising me to get orthotics and has offered a choice of 2 different ones, either £180 or £275. The £180 variety are heat moulded and should last about 3 years. The £275 involve a foot scan and are made in Canada and will take about 3 weeks to do. Unfortunately health insurance won't cover either so more open wallet surgery required.

What else to say? Didn't see much of Austria as the trip went something like this

Plane - Airport - Taxi - Office - Taxi - Hotel - Taxi - Restaurant - Taxi - Hotel - Taxi - Office - Taxi - Airport - Plane, but then I knew the trip would be like this, so I can't complain. Work was interesting though.

Oh one last thing went to see the masseuse during the week, that was a painful experience. At one point in time she had her elbow in my butt, bent my leg and then rotated it outwards, I went very quiet then started reciting "I must not Squawk, I must not Squawk", she has promised to make me squawk at the next session - Gulp! {Sweat beads appear on RobW's forehead at just the though of it}

Letter from Starbucks

Work has made the foolish mistake of letting me out of the office again. I’m currently writing this looking out of the window of one of the Starbucks on Victoria Rd in London. I can recommend the Skinny Blueberry Muffin by the way! I know its probably one of the worst Runners Breakfast but at least it a lot cheaper than the continental breakfast being offered by the hotel (Something like £16). I know the company is paying for it but it’s the principle of the thing!!
Thanks for all the hugs etc after my recent downtime. Normalish service was resumed on Saturday, I took your advice and didn’t run at all over the weekend. Unfortunately with being on travel I won’t get a chance to go running again till Friday. I’m flying to Austria tomorrow and only wanted to take hand luggage so there was no space in my suitcase for running kit :<). That will make a whole 8 days of no running. I’m going to have to have a look at my training programme for Abingdon and a bit of rejigging as I’m on Holiday for 2 weeks in August. Perhaps a perfect time to try out the holiday routines in the this months Runners World.

Bread and Water

I've been a poorly Rob the past couple of days with, shall we say, stomach issues. I had a good session on Wednesday Morning. I've increased my repetition distance to a mile to be more representative of the target race. So I had 3 miles lined up at 6:40 pace with 2 min recovery jogging in between. Left the treadmill felling in good nick. But come the evening I was really, really tired. Ended up in bed by 9:30 which is very rare for me.

Woke up the following morning and checked my pulse before doing anything else 80bpm - notbad considering my resting pulse is 55 bpm. Something definitely not right here. Decided trying to get to work would not have been a good idea so powered on the computer to work from home. Gave that up as a bad idea as I felt totally drained of all energy and went back to bed. LittleW came and visited me in my sick bed, though he was more interested in getting a blood sample to look at under BigW's Horrible Science microscope. He evne offered to cut open my stomach with a plastic knife to get the sample!!

In the meantime the only thing I have been allowed to eat is bread and my only drink is water. I'm getting better, this afternoon I feel full of more energy but thats probably because I've started eating some more (still only bread - You've no idea how difficult it is to watch everyone eat pizza and you can't touch it!) . Don't think running tomorrow is a good idea, might give it a go on Sunday, but perhaps not the planned 15 miler....

Life must go on

I was truly shaken by Thursday events and was worried for a little time until all of our London based staff had been accounted for. Fortunately they are all safe and well. I may be shaken but I will not allow it to change my life, if I did then the bad guys win and I won't let that happen.

So on with life.

After a good start to the running week it fizzled out. I managed to get out for a loosener on Wednesday evening and lost Thursday due to work commitments. This brought around Friday. Some people in the office are doing the Relay for Life on behalf of Cancer Research in a couple of weeks time. To publise this and raise some extra money they set up 2 treadmills in reception and had people running on them all day. One treadmill had the customer team, the other had the prime contractor team (My bunch). Although I'm not taking part in the relay for life my presence on the treadmill was requested by one of the bosses. Senior boss on site clocked an impressive 4.17 miles in his 30 mins, now he is a kind of competative sort of person and it would be a few weeks before we heard the last of that if it was the top run of the day. A couple of the junior bosses decided to make it worth my while to beat it. So I did recording 4.42 miles in my 30 mins. Those of you with a nervous disposition may not want to look at the following table, the numbers get scary (or they did scare me!)

Mile	Time	HR
1	7:21	155
2	6:47	168
3	6:41	172
4	6:32	177
4.42	2:38	183

Didn't run at all for the rest of the week, due to a curry on Friday night with the lads and an Open air prom Concert on Saturdaymeant I ate too much bad stuff and felt like a beached whale for the entire weekend.

Made amends today with another tempo run ( or more accurately a progression run ) for 4.4 miles this time in a slightly slower 35 minutes.

Oh one last thing been to see the chiro a couple of times my hip problem is rapidly sorting itself out, but he suspects I'll need orthotics. So some good news to carry forward.

6% Rate of Climb

Work is really busy at the moment, my lunchtime is disappearing under a flurry of meeting notices. Only one thing for it run in the morning on the treadmill. Nothing unusual in that you may think, but today I tried running a hill session on it. Shall we say it was interesting.

Straightforward session 2 mile warmup 4 * 400m intervals and a warm down. Warm-up OK then the first (virtual) hill. When I was thinking about this last night I didn't know what incline to set the treadmill at. So I read he Runners World Article about hill training in particular that 4000 ft hill in 13 miles. By my calculations that was a 6% climb. OK I'm only doing 0.25 mile reps so that should be easy enough. WRONG!

Got the machine to he 6% then 6:40 pace, by 200 metres I was struggling, hung on till the end of the rep then realised that unlike outdoor running where you stop at the top of the hill and jog back, the treadmill keeps going until told otherwise! Start pressing buttons to get the elevation and speed down to find nothing happening. PANIC! Jumped off and hit the stop button. Worked out that the treadmill can only obey one button at a time so if I'm pressing the speed button and the elevation button at the same time it ignores both - charming.

Climbed back on and had a recovery jog and started over again. This time I was ready for the end of the interval. Do the elevation then the speed. But this session was tough by the last rep i was managing to push my HR upto 184. Last interval involved a full stop again and me hanging over the front of the tready.

All I can say is I'm glad I only have to do this session once every 3 weeks.

Three peaks

This week is cutback so I had a comfortable 8 miles instead of a long 14. At least the plan said comfortable 8 miles. I've been worried recently about my ability to do hills so I decided a hiller route was called for. When I say hilly I mean a couple of 30-40 metre climbs and a couple of miles of rolling country lane. Although the hills aren't high they are a bit steep, sort of short sharp shock.

The route was carefully chosen to avoid wimping out, all the hills lay on the way back home so they had to be done if I wanted to get home.

Number 1 A32 out of Wickham. Longest and highest of the climbs. A main road where the road traffic going up the hill gets 2 lanes to the downhill one lane, gives you an idea of the nastiness of the hill.

Number 2 North Hill shortest but the steepest about 25 metres in 200 hundred metres, lovely!

Number 3 an Old friend of mine only goes up about 30 metres in .4 mile BUT its the last .4 of mile of the run.

I was right the climbs were hard work but there was a couple of long downhill sessions to recover. All in all 8.4 in just under 1hr 11min with a AHR of 153 (told you there was downhill recoveries)

Only downside is my plantar whatever you call it is hurting again. I may convert tomorrow's 3 mile recovery run into an extra rest day - no need to kill myself quite yet.....

Same Gym Different Tready

Just realised this was supposed to be posted last night but for some reason I only saved at as draft.

In the gym we have 3 treadmills in a row and I have my favourite. Its the furtherest from the door and as you look straight ahead out the window there is a bike shed and on the the back of the bike shed there is a vertical metal fixing bar. Now if you are running properly you can fix your gaze on the fixing bar and know that your head is in the correct position and that its not bobbing up and down. So I like it.

Had to use one of the others today :( with nothing to focus on I was finding myself in danger of wandering off the belt, not good in the middle of a tempo run, cold get a bit ugly!

Was a bit naughty was only supposed to do 30 mins 10 slow 15 build up to 10K pace then 5 ease down. I did 35min and covered 4.4 miles. Again I felt that I had plenty left in the tank at the end, but then I think you are supposed to after these runs, there more about teaching the body to cope with a steady acceleration.

Need to go to bed soon, I've got a 6 mile marathon pace run planned for tomorrow morning.


UPDATE
Did my marathon pace run this morning though I'm a little chaffed as MrsW kicked me out the door before I had time to grease up. Things were going OK until I started going up a long slow incline, Heart rate went up and I couldn't get it back down and to top it off the garmin batteries gave up about half a mile from home.