I've recently started making a note of some of what I've been doing, to track my progress. So I thought that I might as well have an actual log, with 'thoughts and stuff'. Might be fun for my older and wiser self to read back through it some day and chuckle at my youthful naivety.
Tuesday 2015/02/17. Run club. Wanted to just do a gentle recovery run, because I'm still aching from Sunday's Liversedge Half Marathon. Went with group 3 and did a gentle 5.3 miles through town and Holbeck. Had a good chat with J all the way round. Talked about getting together to do some extra runs, either long ones or hill sprints. People keep telling me that doing hill sprints every week is a great idea, but I'm not sure that I want to hear that. I was quite happy with once a month!
Wednesday 2015/02/18. Taiji class. Did the long form once, then concentrated mainly on pushing hands and the sabre form. Did some slightly different things in PH, with one partner doing a sort of chopping-hand attack off the standard double routine, and the other one learning to counter. That was interesting. Also got a valuable correction to my hand movement in the double. I used to love doing the sabre form, but I'm really fed up with it now. I can't wait to start learning something else, where I won't have to always be trying to catch up with the rest of the class because they've been taught it and I missed out on chunks of it.
Is that the Yang Sabre from or a Wu style form? (I know you do Wu style, but you do some Yang too, don't you?)
Saturday 2015/02/21. Did a different parkrun, Nostell priory, because a mate of mine was doing his 50th. So I did a steady run round with him, time nothing special, but I really enjoyed it. It was a lovely sunny morning and a beautiful location for a run. That's ten different parkruns that I've run at now. ------------------------- Sunday 2015/02/22. Did 4 miles on my revised marathon training route. The damn thing still isn't as flat as I thought it was, but at least it's a lot less of a climb than on my original version of the route! Was a bit disappointed with how tired my legs felt towards the end, and wondered if I'm still feeling the effects of last Sunday's ludicrously hilly half marathon. But when I checked the time after I'd finished I found that I'd done something close to 7.5 minute miles, which surprised me no end! Really didn't feel like I'd run at anywhere close to that pace.
Tuesday 2015/02/24. Running club. back with group 5, and did just under seven miles. Don't know what the pace was but it felt quick! Had no energy at all this evening for some reason. And it's taking a long time to shake off this cold, which doesn't help things. Hopefully be in better fettle next Tuesday for our monthly appointment with the hills!
Wednesday 2015/02/25. Taiji class. before we started, I did some pushing hands with the teacher and got a much better understanding of something which he'd been showing me last week but which I hadn't really 'got' then. The class 'proper' started with us going throughthe long form, but the hall was far too hot for me and I couldn't really concentrate. Just wanted to go outside and cool down! Fortunately, once the heating switched itself off the place cooled down very quickly. We spent the rest of the class going over parts of the sabre form.
Saturday 2015/02/28. Back to my 'home' parkrun at Woodhouse Moor. Didn't feel particularly energetic, so I decided to try running it in a totally different way just for fun. Started near the back and did a slow warm-up on the first lap, then tried to do the other two laps as quickly as I could and see how many people I could overtake who I know. Sunday 2015/03/01. Did 5 miles on the 'marathon training route'. Made a point of checking the time when I started and finished this time, and I did it in 47 minutes. 9.4 minute miles is a little bit slow, but it does seem a lot more realistic than 7.5 minute ones!
Tuesday 2015/03/03. The running club's monthly hill sprints session. An easy jog for about a mile, keeping all the group together. Then back along the other side of the main road, sprinting up every side street. Total duration about one hour. Everyone seems to have a different opinion of how many hills there actually are, and no-one ever remembers to count! But from looking at the map, I think we did seventeen. Although some of the quicker runners did repeat a few of them to give the slower ones a chance to catch up, so I probably did about twenty - although I didn't sprint the repeated ones, I just ran up steadily. Every time I do this session I get a little bit better at it, but this time I seemed to have improved dramatically. I always try to sprint each one flat out for as far as I can, then just push on as best I can to the top, and recover on the way back down. This time I was able to sprint faster and for longer, and was far less out of breath than usual at the top of each hill. I'm really pleased with how this session went.
Saturday 2015/03/07. Woodhouse Moor parkrun. I always feel a bit zippier after doing a hill sprint session, so I decided that i was going to go for a fast time (fast for me, that is) and attempt to do a personal best. With no pacemakers this week, it was down to me to just push myself and hope the pace was quick enough. Was helped though by getting overtaken at the end of the second lap by a chap I know from the running club. So I picked the pace up and made sure I stayed on his tail. He left me behind round about the 4.5k mark, but I passed him on my sprint finish. Turned out I did it in 24:06, which takes 7 seconds off my PB. Getting under 24 minutes would have been nice, but for now it stays as my target to aim for.
Sunday 2015/03/08. Nice gentle six miler on my 'marathon training route', took 56 minutes. I did seriosuly consider whether I could step up the distance of my Sunday run having gone all out on the Saturday, or whether I should take it a bit easier. Decided to try to keep up my current momentum and hopefully I can keep 'raising the bar' without causing too many aches and pains! I keep discovering new inclines that I hadn't even noticed before! I seem to have a major perception problem where the lie of the land is concerned. At about four miles I did get a bit of a twinge in my left leg which I haven't had before, but it didn't persist. I actually felt pretty good by the end, and finished at somewhere close to my proper 10k pace. Still struggling to work out a really satisfactory schedule that I can fit around work and other commitments. In addition to running club night (Tuesday) and parkrun (Saturday morning) I would ideally like to do one slow run which I would build up into my long marathon training run, plus one hill sprint session each week. I would really need a rest day after the hill sprints though. So although I could do them on Saturday after parkrun, that would rule out a Sunday run, and that's the only day that I've really got time for a longer run. Once I get up towards twenty miles there is no way that I could fit that in during the week. If any other runners have got any suggestions then I would be most grateful!
Tuesday 2015/03/10: running club. Went with group 5, and the plan was to do 7 miles at an average pace of 8.5 minutes per mile. Didn't get the exact figures afterwards, but I think we were probably closer to 8 mpm than 8.5, because we were doing about 7.5 pace at times on the flatter bits. It certainly was very quick for me - quicker than my normal 5k pace! But I stayed right on top of it and really enjoyed the run. Only flagged a bit on the steep climb back up to 'base' at the end.
Wednesday 2015/03/11. Taiji class (with Fish of Doom.) Excercises, then ran through the short form twice. No-one at the class actually knows the short form apart from the teacher, so I wouldn't say that FOD was at much of a disadvantage there! Did a little bit of pushing hands, and some new stuff which I'm stil struggling to get my head around. Then ran through the sabre form for a bit.
Saturday 2015/03/14. Parkrun, followed by the annual 'three legged relay'. Took it VERY easy on the actual parkrun, otherwise I'd have seized up before the relay even began, especially given that it was a bitterly cold morning. My actual time was a glacial 29:06, but I DON'T CARE! The relay was fifteen teams of three people, doing one lap each of a mile, and it was handicapped, so everyone had an equal chance in theory. Found it quite hard to judge the pace at an unfamilar distance, and didn't want to crash and burn! Did okay though, and we finished third. Yay! ----------------- Sunday 2015/03/15. Got an upset stomach and felt a bit queasy, so decided to skip today's run and have a good rest and recharge my batteries.
Tuesday 2015-03-17. Running club, group 5. Different group leader, plan was to do 7 miles at 8.5 average... but with plenty of hills and a couple of hill sprints thrown into the mix. Perhaps not surprisingly, given that it was quite a mixed group with a few people moving up a group for the first time, the plan didn't quite work. Too many stops for people to catch up and get their breath back! We only did 6.3 miles, although the pace was up at about 7.5 at times, and with some seriously steep climbs, it felt like we'd done seven miles by the end! It was a good session.
Wednesday 2015/03/18. Taiji class. Did the long form and my sides started to ache a bit, so I think my body is trying to tell me that I haven't been practising it nearly often enough. And I think my body might be right. Also did some sabre form, and spent quite a lot of time on some 'sensitivity' drills which the teacher has been developing lately. Each week I think I'm getting a better understanding of what we are trying to achieve. ---------------------- Thursday 2015/03/19. My first solo hill sprint session. I've re-jigged my weekly schedule a bit to give myself a free slot on Thursday mornings, because it's the only way that I can manage four proper runs a week. Lovely morning, but the air was surprisingly cold and I really felt it in my lungs when I started running! Should have done a longer warm-up run before I started the sprints, so that's a useful lesson learned. I did ten 'climbs' with a slow run round the block in between each one. It would be an exaggeration to call them all sprints though, I think three were more like steady runs really. It was quite a tough little hill, and it wasn't a long recovery time inbetween. I was only gone for twenty seven minutes door-to-door, so not really a long enough session. Next time I'll extend the warm-up and cool-down runs, and then see about increasing the number of sprints after that.
Saturday 2015/03/21. Woodhouse Moor parkrun. Having spent all week in two minds whether to go for a PB or to take it steady and do a longer run on Sunday, I finally decided to just sort of 'run quickly' with my focus on good technique, not to push myself but just to see how I went. Needless to say, such a wishy-washy sort of plan was useless. Once I was passed by a lass who I know overtakes me every week, I decided to use her as a 'marker' and try to push for a good time. In the end I crossed the finish line completely spent, and it turned out that I had taken nearly twenty seconds off my PB. Now that I've got it under 24 minutes, I'm going to forget about it for a few months, because once J finishes her current series of races at the end of March, we're going to start doing long runs on Saturdays with the parkrun as one part of it. She reckons I can get my Leeds half marathon PB down to 1h 50m, which would be nice! ----------------------------- Sunday 2015/03/22. Fancied a change, so instead of doing my usual Sunday morning run in Gledhow Valley Woods, I did three laps of the big lake in Roundhay Park. Total distance 7.83 km (which I know because there is a board in the park which tells you how far it is!) I think that is nearly five miles.
