Well, this is my first real attempt at a blog. I have been resisting the blogging movement for some time now. Preferring to spend my time on other things. But I have come to see the value in recording daily occurences, events, achievements, training runs, etc. There is something in the pretentiousness of thinking that someone else would like to read what you have been doing that I want to tap in to. Not being much of a "Dear Diary" kind of guy, to have the motivation to document my life may be a temporary state. But if I can be bothered to keep this updated, then maybe I will see some improvement.
This blog is primarily to record my exercises. I chose this medium as opposed to sites such as MapMyRun or Facebook simply because others are less likely to read what is written here. If you are reading this, I will apologise in advance for many things. I will most likely change tense a dozen times during any one post.
I am going to get straight ito it then. I wanted to record the last week's exercises here, as I am reasonably proud of myself for being able to increase my workload, intensity and even start to see some improvement in my times. Just tonight I did my local out and back time trial run from my house on Farm Rd Springwood to Martin's Lookout in a pretty quick time for me, 22.42. I will have to work out how far it is, I think its close to 6 km, and includes some very slight inclines and declines as well as fire trail and bitumen. It was getting quite dark as I left at 8pm and was only raining slightly. Sleep Train sent out his Blue Mountains Marathon Clinic reminder message before I left, encouraging all to come and join him for an "easy" 10km run before work. I have said this before, "easy" is relative and means absolutley nothing for me when it his coming from him.
Sunday was a light swim after work at Glenbrook, in the cloudy, luke warm water that wasn't particularly refreshing. I only clocked up 2 km as the pool was closing up, but I put in a hard 1km to start off, fininshing around 14.30. Not quick by the standards of many, but I felt good and was probably only at 80%. The day before had been a great adventure run with the father and son effort of Wayne and Mick Donges, accompanied by Scam Bullant and Sleep Train. Hereafter, I shall refer to these two as scam and sleep respectively. Their cute little nicknames are tedious to write all the time. Sorry guys. We started early, which allowed me to get back for work. As they have both mentioned in their blogs, we clocked up a nice run heading out from my place, down Martin's, up the other side, checked out Lost World, and then down to duckhole for a little history lesson and up into Glenbrook. Just over 2 hours in total, with about 15 minutes of stretches and rests and appreciating the amazing views all up. This was probably my longest run in terms of time, and I felt good for the most part. The steps were tiresome.
Friday was the Panther's Tri Club "mini tri". I dislike Sleep's description of the tri as mini. It was more of a training run, as the heat meant they couldn't have the race as they would normally. I lack the discipline to approach a training run at the same intensity as a race, which meant I didn't push it too hard and only ended up running about 1km after the ride. The heat played a big role in this also, the bike ride helped me decide that I would never race when the temp was above 40 degrees. Can I blame the poor performance on spending too much of the day looking at a new car with the wife? Probably not.
Thursday, I missed the Mountains Marathon Clinic (MMC) 10km "easy" run in the morning with Sleep and Scam and possibly Edwards. I had intented to run, yet snooze and OK on my phone were a blur at 5:30 am, hence I slept through. Admitedly, I didn't feel much remorse about this. The morning before was a swim with Sleep, Scam and what has been labelled as the femme squad: a few of the local lasses who are a pretty feisty bunch. Clocked up 3 km, with my usual routine of 1km free straight up, followed by 500m flipper kick, 500m with paddle and buoy, and then a 400m sprint. If I have the energy I will attempt 5 100m sprints and a 100m warm down, however this morning I could only get 2 100m sprints in, so I increased the warm down. The femme squad permitted me to jump on the end of their 100m sprints, I think that was my undoing.
Tuesday was a big day for me. After making it to the usual MMC run in the morning, I backed it up that evening with an approx. 12.5 km run up at Lawson with Mr and Mrs Michael Donges. This was a good run, with some fairly steep hills to finish the run. This was the first time I ran both in the morning and the evening, and they were each fairly big runs for me.
Monday might have been an evening ride, I cant remember. The rides have taken a back seat at the moment due to concentrating on my runs. Perhaps that was why I struggled on Friday at the tri, usually the rides allow me to make some time back on everybody else. I have also been neglecting the bike after the terrible accident on the Australia Day weekend on the M7 motorway, where some triathletes were taken out by a truck. I had ridden this road the morning before with a mate. It just brought the pretty big risks we take when we ride on the roads close to home and made me think about what I had to lose now with my family. I think I would like to stick to the quieter roads and the regatta centre now. Maybe the M7 cycleway, however that isn't terribly appealing. The usual morning ride I do with Mark Hadfield, down to the bottom of Lapstone hill and back, isn't too bad. There is plenty of corner and breakdown lane, and the traffic isn't too bad at that hour. I just need to get in some longer rides now in the lead up to Huskisson. I am probably a little late in my preparation for Husky, and still haven't made a decision. I know I am quite a way off the pace, I just want to get a larger triathlon under my belt as a reference for training and future races. We will see.
The Saturday before this week was the bigger run with Sleep and Scam through Glenbrook NP. Heading out at 5:30 was interesting. But I actually enjoyed the bigger run, and still managed to get back, have a shower and get to work to open at 8:30. Perhaps this will become a regular.
Until next time.
I will endeavour to get the splits up for the MMC 10km Sun Valley Run over the next few days. Sleep wants to see how slow we are running.
Oh..btw.. If anyone is interested I am not a Doctor. I dont have a PhD nor an MBBS. I dont prescribe, and I am not Oprah's little lap dog. I received this nickname from Sleep, and it has stuck. If anyone wants to make me an honorary doctor, I wouldn't say no. I just cant see myself working that hard to become a real one. Pharmacist Phil doesn't have the same ring to it anyway.
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