Week 4 Run Efforts Monday 26th October

The clocks went back an hour yesterday making it brighter this morning, though it will be darker much sooner this afternoon. It's going to be a bit of a shock.
Making the most of the daylight I went out at lunchtime for my scheduled effort session. I was joined by David Archer and Danny Mann. Both work for Aviva and Danny is another TA Member, though he is a member of the original TA, the Terratorial Army, as opposed to Tri-Anglia. Danny is also a bit quick, looks every inch the runner, and was credited with a stage win in the RNR in 2008. He spent the warm up and warm down trying to talk me into entering Marathon des Sables. The answer to that, in one word, "no". Not for 2010 anyway.
The efforts. 3 x 400m aiming at 85-90s with 60 seconds rest, 2 x 800m aiming at 3:05 - 3:10 with 90 seconds rest and 1 x 1200m aiming at 4:45-4:50.
My times were: 400s = 1:27.7, 1:31.6, 1:27.5, 800s = 3:04.7, 3:06.4, 1200 = 4:50.0

Completion of a recovery Week

On Saturday I had a choice between a swim or an easy bike ride. It was wet and a little windy. When the offer came up of lunch in Holt and a trip to a private members club for a swim I took that option. "Private Members" club sounds very grand. I'm refering to Green's Gym. It's a nice enough 3 lane 25m swimming pool. The changing room is better than UEA and the lockers much better but whilst the water in the pool has a nice feel and you get a good purchase and swim well I still prefer the UEA pool. Certainly a good chance of getting an undisturbed swim at Greens.

Sunday the choice was rest or either an easy run or ride. I decided on rest. Went across to Yarmouth to watch the Yarmouth 10k where I knew a far few of the runners. Some who I knew were entered and some that I didn't. My photos are on Facebook.

Swim then Rest wk3 Friday 23rd October

Yippee I managed to get out of bed and upto UEA for a morning swim. Allowed myself the luxury of driving as I was still put off about venturing into the cold and dark on my bike. Downside of which is that I then couldn't go straight to work, but had to go home to drop the car off.
Cut the swim a bit short doing 2km in 37mins. Set comprised:
Warm up: 300m freestyle, 300m pull, 400m drill (as 100m catch up, 100m zip-up, 100m fists, 100m cross over).
Main set: 4x 100m on 1:45 (swam first in 1:25 the remainders sub 1:30) then straight into 6x 50m on 50seconds.
By "on" I mean "repeating on". That involves starting the second effort "on" the time gap. For example my second 100m started 1 minute 45 seconds after the first one, so as I did it in 1:25 I got 20 seconds rest. For the later ones when i was nearer 1:30 I only got 15 seconds rest.
Warm down: 300m which I did as 100m fly drill (1 arm fly alternating arms each 25m), 100m back crawl and 100m freestyle.

In work and just enjoyed a bacon butty. Granary roll with a bit of brown sauce. My reward.

Rest Day wk3 Thursday 22nd October

A rest day though I ran into the office seeing as I'd left clothes and bike there the previous evening. Running up the hill into work was hard work. Legs were stiff and sore. Glad I didn't have to do anything else the rest of the day.
I did get an entry in for March's Ballbuster Duathlon and also had a bit of a look at the course for the upcoming Luton Marathon. I was born quite close to the course, 6-8 miles or something so plotted the route I ran a couple of times as a teenager. Back then that route seemed to be miles and miles long and seemed to take forever. Turns out it was only 2 miles.

Wet and Windy wk3 Wednesday 21st October

Autumn is finally here. I might still be sleeping under my summer duvet but outside it was wet and windy. The single speed winter bike came out for the first time since March.
The schedule today asked for a 12-16 mile run depending upon how I felt. It does seem rather a long way to run in the middle of a recovery week, but I'm not going to argue and at least there wasn't a target pace set.
To fit the run in around work I opted to do the run as my means of getting home. I worked through lunch so as to be able to sneak off a little earlier and started running at 16:50. Was hoping to be able to get the run in before it got dark, but with the days being well and truely drawn in ahead of the end of British Summer Time at the weekend I wasn't too optimistic. It was also drizzling.
I'd plotted a route that google maps reckoned was 17 miles, but that was sending me off route at times because it didn't know of a couple of foot paths but also because it wanted me to run down the Newmarket road passed the slip road down to the Eaton lights that I wanted to head down and continue to a roundabout, turn round it come back up the Newmarket road and then take Colney Road to then get into Eaton. Route turned out to be 14.2miles and took just over 2 hours. As you can see from the profile included on the heart rate trace it wasn't flat. Something like 256m (840ft) of uphill. Legs felt heavy most of the day before the run. Felt good for the first mile or so but still heavy and then whinged a little for the rest of the run.
I was well prepared though for the conditions. I used again the Innov8 bum bag with horizontal drinks system, Ron Hill lycra shorts, Ron Hill long sleeve top, Ron Hill gilet, Ron Hill reflective vest and Pretzl head torch with rear light all sourced from Cotsworld Outdoor and sold to me by Andy Bolden (Roo). On my feet I had a pair of Saucony Grid Rides with foxriver socks that Pete Johnson of the Runners Centre sold me. As the drizzle had become rain there was a lot of standing and flowing water on the roads. I got wet. My main observations were 1) when it's raining hard and when your breath is condensing you actually see better in the dark without the head torch but people can't see you so well 2) without the headtorch you don't see the branches blown into the smaller roads and 3) either with or without the headtorch its amazing how many puddles your feet find.

Recovery Turbo wk3 Tuesday 20th October

Wasn't able to get out for a ride at lunchtime due to the second day of a First Aid at Work Refresher course. Pleased to say I passed with flying colours even though I was a bit slow in calling the dumby an ambulance in one part of the assessment and nearly fainting during the severe bleeds bit. The instructor was talking rather graphically about severed major arteries, the volume of blood loss and the amount of time you'd survive. I was imagining it was me rapidly lossing blood and started to feel a little uncomfortable. I tried to get my mind onto other more pleasent thoughts. To get myself as far away from the class room as possible I imagined myself snowboarding in the alpes. Almost worked but I'd taken the ruptured artery with me and the snow was rapidly going red and figured that was far to far from medical assistance. Then tried to put my mind into a focused bike session with my head down and working hard, but biking on the roads is probably the most high risk thing I do and the place I'm most likely to suffer a serious injury and that made me very queesy. I had to admit to it before slumping in my seat. I was encouraged down to the floor and feet were put up on a chair - the proper way to treat for shock.
Anyway I ramble on and that was actually Monday rather than Tuesday.
Tuesday evening after the course I did a one hour recovery ride on the turbo trainer. Lots of high cadence, 100rpm in the small chain ring alternating the gradient and the rear sprockets. Legs felt a little heavy but not too bad.

Week 2 Review

A harder week on the bike and the second hard week of the first 3 week block. The two rides over the weekend certainly took a lot out of the legs and come the transition run (t-run) after the bike ride on Sunday I was certainly spent.
On the Monday morning I found I'd put another kilo of weight on. 77.4kg really isn't great. Race weight out to be 73 or less. 75kg for my height 174cm (5ft 9) gives me a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25 which in straight medical terms is over weight. Tuesday morning the weight was at 76.8kg so some of that could have been the large curry Sunday evening.
Had a good massage from Becky Schofield Monday evening. She didn't find any knots in my legs until she got to the last bit, my left calf.