The rest of 2011 - between marathons

[marathondan]

Well, the magic spreadsheet hasn't quite turned out to be the miraculous motivator that I hoped for.

For a while, things were going very well. I even thought about changing my plans completely, and spending the summer doing some triathlon base training with an eye on entering an event next summer. I tried a 9-mile ride followed up with a 2.5 mile run, which was an interesting experience. I do very little cycling, so not only was I using unusual muscles, but I then went into a short run fatigued but not feeling fatigued in the usual places.

However, as always, the problem is the swim training. The swim is the leg that I'd need to put most improvement effort into, and getting down the pool is quite an overhead compared with pulling on the runners and plodding down the street. So I've cooled on the triathlon idea for now.

Then I slipped into a work-related funk, which turned my mojo to zero for a week or so - or maybe I'm always on the lookout for an excuse. Anyway, that demon was at least temporarily fended off with the loss of only a couple of sessions, and this morning after dropping the kids at school I went for my first hill session. At 9am it was already quite warm. I locked my bike as usual at Folly Way and then did 4 reps of around 400m (distance, don't know the climb). As always, the first one just seemed like a ridiculous idea, but I soon got into the swing of things and they weren't too bad. You certainly know you've had a workout.

So, not exactly on plan, but there's some running happening. Having you people here to recount it to helps, too.