Mangling March or, Sleepless in Sydney.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Not sure why, but sleep has become something of an issue for me in recent weeks. I suspect it has mainly been due to the weather (hot and humid) or maybe I have some kind of bug. Either way, it's left me tired, befuddled and heavy of leg. An attempted 8km yesterday was no more than a travesty of 50 metres or so before the legs union went on strike and the brain management had no alternative but to cave into the workers' demands for a day off. And so it came to pass that the first major dent was punched in the training calendar.

Still, it's no great loss. A decent sleep will put it all right and we'll be back on track before you can say left wing trade union factionalism.

[marathondan]

Still, it's no great loss. A decent sleep will put it all right and we'll be back on track before you can say left wing trade union factionalism.

Hmm, bad luck mate. Good to see you taking a pragmatic view though. I pulled out of one session last week, which left me under a slight cloud for the rest of the day. You're seeing the bigger picture.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Ah, crud. Sore joints and muscles and yucky looking phlegm made this morning's 5km run/walk outing difficult and disappointing. Tomorrow I'm off to Brisbane for a week thus further complicating matters. Still, clearer days are ahead, and there's plenty of time. As you say Dan, I'm keeping my eye on the bigger picture and trying not to panic.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

We've certainly seen a few disasters lately: cyclones, floods, earthquakes (both New Zealand and now Japan), and they all seem to coincide with my visits to Brisbane. Well, okay sometimes my trips here are because of said disasters, but still I have come to equate Brisbane with natural disasters of all kinds... and concomitant long working days as a result for moi.

The first time I came here on a work trip was at the height of the drought about 3 years ago. Water restrictions meant baths were banned, swimming pools could not be topped up (and many had therefore evaporated to uselessness) and gardens were dead because they couldn't be watered.

Not now though! This year it has been quite the opposite. Queensland has suffered, and is still suffering major floods, including here in Brisbane, with terrible loss of life and property. The city still hasn't properly recovered from the flood of seven or so weeks ago, but at least now I can have a bath at the hotel. And hot baths have been the order of the day as I'm struggling to fight off some stupid bug. Long days at work are not helping - meantime, apart from a few long walks, I've been too tired of leg and brain for running, especially as the weather is also hotter and more humid here than back home.

So, I'm full of excuses, but the good news is that I'm out of here on Tuesday - back to the sanity and relative cool of Sydney and hopefully a little running routine will resume.

Meantime, let's have an end to these disasters, huh?

[marathondan]

Meantime, let's have an end to these disasters, huh?

Succinctly put, mate.

In other news... I see a small item in your footer dated 3rd April. I guess that's going to be a training run more than anything else? At least it will be a clear hour in your schedule to run. Good luck with everything until then.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

... I see a small item in your footer dated 3rd April. I guess that's going to be a training run more than anything else?

Definitely! Absolutely no possibility of a fast run, so it'll just be another race number to add to the collection and a fun training plod. My sister-in-law will be running as well, so it's a bit of a family thing for added interest.

I need to get out there for a few more runs soon though or even the 10k will be a bit of a test!

Back in Sydney tomorrow - that's got to help.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

After an extended bout of man-flu, starting to get things back on track here with a gentle, but non-stop one hour's plod last evening. It was another of those "I really don't want to do this" runs that actually turned out really well. Thinking I would just see how it went, after 15 minutes I was feeling good enough to push on for the full hour, which was comfortably achieved.

And did I feel good afterwards? I'll say - so much so that I celebrated with one (and only one!) of these:

[marathondan]

Good stuff MLCM! Just the kind of run to get you back into the groove. And that beer looks like just the stuff to coat yer pistons...

[stillwaddler]

Only one - how could you resist another? Well done for getting out there, funny how reluctant runs sometimes turn out really well.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Only one - how could you resist another?

The price of the bloody stuff is a good disincentive, I can tell you.

Five runs in five days and I'm feeling back on top of things, RC-viewers. And with that I've been walking 9-10km each day too, so the bod is feeling great just at the mo. Don't worry though, I certainly haven't been overdoing it - three of those five runs were mere fifteen minuters, just to keep me on track and ward off any muscle soreness. Seems to work too, though the walking probably has as much to do with that. I've been walking to and from a train station that is 2km from work and putting in 5km walks at lunch time, and I think it's paying off. Today's hour-long interval session went far better than I had feared, so things are looking good.

A few weeks ago I started using Mrs MLCM's hi-tech bathroom scales into which you put your age, height, gender etc and it replies with weight, fat and water percentages, basal metabolic rate etc. So far so good - everything's still pointing in the right direction, which is just the confidence booster I needed.

Tonight I celebrate with my first drink in ... four whole days. Gosh!*



*STOP PRESS: Mrs MLCM requested another alcohol-free-day and I complied, meaning it will be FIVE whole days without a drink. I might just curl up in a corner, polish my halo and dream wistful dreams of drinks gone by.

[marathondan]

Five runs in five days and I'm feeling back on top of things, RC-viewers.

Wow, you've pretty much turned into Ron Hill!

A few weeks ago I started using Mrs MLCM's hi-tech bathroom scales into which you put your age, height, gender etc and it replies with weight, fat and water percentages, basal metabolic rate etc.

Does it do your lottery numbers as well?

Sounds like you're going great, and your race schedule looks like an excellent buildup. Just that one on Nov 20th I'm not too sure about...

[stillwaddler]

*STOP PRESS: Mrs MLCM requested another alcohol-free-day and I complied, meaning it will be FIVE whole days without a drink. I might just curl up in a corner, polish my halo and dream wistful dreams of drinks gone by.
[/quote]

Oh My word - 5 whole days? Don't you both know beer is the most excellent form of carbs ever invented? Perfect for all runners on a strict training regime.

As for talking scales - don't you get the urge to argue with its pronouncement every morning;-)

Joking aside, good on you MLCM you've obviously got things cracked.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Joking aside, good on you MLCM you've obviously got things cracked.

I hope so, sw, I really do. If I'm to run up that bloody mountain in November I need a good solid few months of running in my legs.

And Dan, most astute of you to refer to Dan Hill. I've of course pretty much taught him every thing he knows about endurance running...

And yes, the scales do give you this week's lotto numbers. This weeks were 81.6, 17.6, 60.1, 1762, 40 and 24.6.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Six runs in six days! A nice strong, fast 5km today and now I'm beginning to feel like a runner again. Did i say fast? Well, faster than I have been running for a while, anyhow.

I also managed an hour on the bike last night, which hurt a bit, as I haven't done the bike thing for some time. But, I see what my podiatrist meant when he said cycling was good for balancing the quads, which in turn lessens the likelihood of knee problems.

Speaking of podatrists, a moth went to see a podiatrist and said "Doc, you have to help me, I'm so depressed I feel like killing myself!" The podiatrist said "That's terrible, but you need a psychiatrist, not a podiatrist - why did you come here?" The moth says "Because the light was on."

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Yep, the start to the F1 season is finally getting under way today in Melbourne, with Aussie star Mark Webber hoping to go one better this year in his new, lighter, faster car.

Also lighter and faster (though not any newer) is MLCMan, now up to his eighth run in as many days, and they're just getting better and better. I'm of course still a long way behind some of the RC champions here well into their Brighton and London marathon training, but I'm making good progress, as evidence by two challenges I set myself this weekend.

Yesterday I swapped my long run from Sunday to Saturday and headed off for a leisurely 90 minutes non-stop plod. This was comfortably achieved - so much so that I set myself what I thought was a much harder challenge for today, namely to break 30 minutes for the 5km, something I haven't done for a very long time - probably two years or more. And I was left wondering whether I had tested myself sufficiently or not, finishing the run in 29:18 and while I won't say I romped it in, I wasn't really struggling at any point either. So, very happy I am.

So just 7 days now to the first race on my 2011 calendar, the local 10km fun run. It's called a fun run, but it's treated by many as a serious challenge as it incorporates the worst of the local undulating terrain, so it won't be a fast race, that's for sure.

In the meantime I have four long work days ahead, which will necessitate restricting running to the tiny 15 minuters I've had to resort to, with hopefully a reasonable amount of walking as I did last week. I've little doubt now that the short runs are actually far more beneficial than you might at first think. To my mind they certainly help ward off any muscle soreness, and a quarter hour of hills or reps actually prepares the body for the longer sessions later in the week. So far it's working for me, anyhow.

Track du jour has to be Bon Jovi's Living On A Prayer, coming on the mp3-gadget-box as it did exactly half way through my run...

Oh - oh we're half way there
Livin' on a prayer
Take my hand and we'll make it - I swear
Livin' on a prayer

Bon Jovi - Living On A Prayer

[marathondan]

Marvellous - you're into a routine, which as we all know is half the battle. Keep it up!

Interesting that you are benefitting from daily outings of not much more than a mile - a new policy round these parts I think. Maybe the gain is mental as well as physical?

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Interesting that you are benefitting from daily outings of not much more than a mile - a new policy round these parts I think. Maybe the gain is mental as well as physical?

Funny but I've been mulling over that quite a bit lately. Certainly over the course of a working week it adds another 45 - 60 minutes of running in relatively easy fashion, which is nothing to thumb your nose at, but I do think now that the mental side of it is probably the more important.

My working days starts when I leave home at 5:30 a.m. and I don't get home until sometime between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m. Therefore, I'm cream-crackered and thought of changing into running togs and hitting the streets for 5km or more gets short shrift, especially as we head into winter. However jumping on the treadmill for 15 minutes is another thing, which is what I've been doing quite successfully.

The main benefit though is indeed mental. After four long days at work, if I don't run I'm quite exhausted and just not in that space marked "runner". But by running every day, even for just 15 minutes, it becomes another part of the daily routine and getting out the door on my days off is just an extension of that, instead of something that requires motivation and effort and even a modicum of planning. By running daily, life accomodates it far more readily, rather than me having to try and squeeze it into the schedule. Last week it resulted in a tad over 33 km for the week. Had I not done the short runs I feel certain my weekly total would have been significantly less, and not just by the kilometres run on the short days.

Anyway, this week I persisted with the short runs skipping only once. As I had by that stage run for ten consecutive days it wasn't a problem to have a rest day and by then I really did need one, having somewhat overdone the tempo session the day before.

On Friday I did my long run - 14km - instead of Sunday which is race day. Comfortably completed and I now feel ready to tackle another half mara. The one I've entered in six weeks time however has a strict cut off - you must pass the 11km mark inside 75 minutes or they pull you from the course. At the moment I could probably just scrape it in but I do need to concentrate on some speed work over the next few weeks to ensure I get some pace back into my legs. I'm definitely improving in that regard, so I'm confident unless something untoward happens that on race day I will be fine.

Meantime, I have a small matter of a 10km fun run tomorrow to complete. It has a few hills in it for added interest so will be a good training run, though I'm not expecting anything exciting in terms of pace. Will undoubtedly be fun though, which is the main thing.

Cheers, RC-people!

[marathondan]

Assuming it's a morning race I guess I've left it too late to wish you luck for the 10K, but I hope it was an enjoyable and uplifting day out and you got a decent workout.

Re the half mara, the cutoff time adds a little spice and gives you something to aim for. It sounds like it will ensure you have to work that little bit harder, which is good for the steady progression that you are planning over the course of the year. You really don't want an over-attentive marshal pulling you off half way round the course...

Your success in training your brain to want to exercise reminded me of this recent post by Scott Adams - see the paragraph entitled "exercise".