A brief wrap up of my training for the upcoming Melbourne marathon. 6 weeks out and the nerves are starting to appear.
Monday 25th August – Rest day from any extraneous exercise. A quick run on the treadmill (1.7km @ 7:30) just before my yoga class as I was running late leaving too little time to get a decent run in. Tried out my new Gaiam mat tonight, found it a little slippery, but the additional length and width over the standard mat was welcomed.
Tuesday 26th August – Early rise for spin class. Back on my usual bike and the world is a better place again. (23.3km @ 55:31, Avg 85rpm / 185 watts)
Wednesday 27th August – Set off on my normal route and around 8km in noticed I was limping. No pain to speak of, just things weren’t feeling right. Stopped and had a stretch and after a few paces I was back in rhythm. Around the 13km mark I could feel myself limping again so cut the run a bit short and headed home. Spent a bit of time stretching out my legs when I got home hoping to avoid any serious injury. (14.52km @ 1:04.52) Note the symmetry of the numbers, and yep, I’m a numbers nerd… Wednesday evening is my usual yoga night but the last Wednesday of each month is Poker night with mates so no additional stretching and bending tonight.
Thursday 28th August – Spin class again. Back in the saddle again for another class and we were told one of our regular class mates has been diagnosed with Breast Cancer. Information like that puts life into perspective. Here is someone getting fit, just returned from a trip with her family to be given such hard hitting news. My thoughts are definitely with her as she enters a new phase of her life (24.2km @ 56:49, Avg 87rpm / 181 watts)
Friday 29th August – Early morning easy run with my ‘limping’ issue from Wednesday still playing on my mind. As much as it was difficult I kept my pace slow and consistent. It is definitely a strange feeling that what I now feel is a slow pace of 5:00 min/km was my fast pace back in March. The extra kilometers and training has made a massive improvement to my fitness level and pace. (12.73km @ 1:03.23)
Saturday 30th August – Bit of a change up today, decided to meet up with a couple of guys from work for some stair work to train for the upcoming Eureka Climb. Arrived a bit early to give me a chance to run a few laps of the park just near the stairs. (6.95km @ 29:43) Once we got into running the stairs I could really feel the burn in my quads. The first set of stairs we ran were a set of 88 broken into 5 flights, with a large gap between the second and third flight. The advantage we have for training over the real event is we get the chance for a break whilst running back down to the bottom of the stairs. Looking forward to the challenge to continue heading upwards for the 88 floors of the Eureka Tower. We also tried another couple of stairs along the Geelong waterfront but none have the intensity of the first set we trained at. Looks like our subsequent training will be held there unless we can find a better alternative. Total time and distance spent running up and down stairs…(6.4km @ 40:00)
Sunday 31st August – Race day – 10.5km with the Geelong Cross Country Club at You Yangs. On a difficult and undulating course I decided to push hard from the outset and try to hold off any back markers on the final stretch. Somehow my race plan stayed strong and I spent the race passing people without anyone catching me. As I entered the last 1km rise I could see at least one other runner in front of me. As I pushed harder I could see the runner had a yellow ribbon denoting not eligible for the handicap win. With the constant feeling of getting swamped by the back markers I continued to push and ended up crossing the line first. My first win in any running event ever, and first time to receive an athletics award since my days in little athletics during the 1980’s. My data from the race (10.54km @ 44:57). During the afternoon I checked my Strava account and found out I had ran 298km for the month. Well of course this meant I needed to run the additional few kilometers to get past that 300km mark. A quick run around the block and mission accomplished – (5.24km @ 22:27.9)
Another week down, and a new set of goals have developed including signing on for the Melbourne City2Sea 14km run, which is the same day as the EurekaClimb. My theory, if you don’t put the challenge out there, what are you trying to achieve? With winter now out of the way I’m looking forward to the extra daylight and hopefully some warmer days ahead.
Overall distance – 47.5km spin class , 58km running