Jumpin' Januaries!

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

A brace of good runs has bracketed the New Year and reawakened within me some vestige of confidence ahead of Almeria, now not so very many weeks away. And this is despite some wicked weather, being hot and worse, very humid with it, the humidity being for me the real killer of any training schedule. Despite this the running continues, albeit with a necessarily rubbery schedule that must rapidly change and accommodate extremes of weather, seasonal festivities and work requirements.

As an additional impost on my training, one of the admonishments of the Maffetone Method is to always ensure you do a sufficient warm up before running, and an equivalent cooldown at the end. These can be as simple as walking, but the good Dr Maffetone's emphasis on it is significant. This, I have been doing, and the difference it makes is definitely noticeable. The only drawback is, of course, the extra time required to complete a run. For me, this extra half hour (15 minutes before and after) has largely meant an end to my early morning runs, as there simply isn't time to squeeze in the run together with the requisite warm up and cool down before I have to choof off to work.

For my final run of 2016, however, the forecast maximum of 37C meant I had little choice but to arise even earlier than usual and complete the scheduled run before the heat of the day really kicked in. Despite the early hour it was still warm and seriously muggy even at 4:30 a.m. but it felt great to be running the pre-dawn streets again, and although I had to cut the warm up/cool down walks in about half to get it all done before heading off to work, it was a largely successful outing, and beautifully helped assuage the awfulness which is working on a public holiday.

To kick in the New Year a long slow run was just the ticket to get the year off to a positive start. Still muggy, but thankfully without the blistering heat, I completed a solid 90-minute run and entered the details into the running log with an unusually large gob of smugness, which has been missing in recent times. Looking back over the last three years of running log entries was not especially gratifying, although I was pleased that 2016 was a substantial improvement on the previous two years. The task ahead is to make 2017 the best running year for some time, and maybe cross off a few more of those running bucket list items. The first of those is, of course, Almeria, and now close enough to almost taste the tapas and cerveza.

Speaking of Almeria, it was good to have a chat the other day with fellow RCer, forumite and 2017 Almerian Charlie Cat 5, currently in this part of the world for some intensive hot-weather training prior to the big race. I say he's in this part of the world, and it's true he's in Australia, but he's still over 3,400 kilometres distant in Western Australia, so not quite able to pop over here to Sydney for a quick beer, for example. Still, it's nice to see fellow RCers down here on the far side of the planet. 

So, with 2017 off to a good start, and the first major race looming, it looks set to be a good year in the running shoes.

Happy New Year, everyone!