Sunday Long(er) Run

The battle to do a decent size long run began today and I've started reasonably well I think. Yesterday was my rest day but since I had a fairly easy week I was feeling guilty all day and at about 5pm it got the better of me. I didn't want to run - I try to at least have one day off a week, but I needed some sort of aerobic workout so I had this idea of skipping! Now I haven't skipped since about Gr. 8 at school but from what I remembered it was a good workout and easy. I searched around the garage looking for some sort of rope I could use to skip - that was a half hour ordeal in itself! Eventually I found a good rope which I cut and found a place on the back patio clear of plants, chairs, beams etc. When I started Lara thought we were going to play so she kept running towards me and then she would get scared by the rope and take off and turn around and do it again - she did this for about 2mins before finally just laying down about 2metres in front of me. Ripley (the cat) sat on the water tank staring at me as if I was totally nuts! I started off going at what I thought was a comfortable skipping pace, but what the hell do I know what a comfortable skipping pace is? After about 2 or 3 mins my arms were dead, my calf muscles were burning and I was sweating bullets. Skipping is definitely an excellent exercise for strengthening the calf muscles. Before I started I had this idea of doing 30mins - fat chance of that! I settled on doing just 10mins and thats tougher then any 60min run I've ever done. After my skipping fiasco I took Lara for a run up Lara's hill - so by the end of yesterday I wasn't feeling so guilty anymore.

Today my calf muscles were a little tender and my knee was a bit niggly - from the skipping no doubt. I was going to go out on the open road but since I was a little injured I decided to play it safe and make my way to the gym. I got there at about 2pm and thankfully the cardio room was empty and freezing cold. I punched in 90mins on the treadmill and started off at 5:27pace. I did this pace for the first 30mins before eventually going a little quicker every 15mins. I really wanted to do 17km for the 90mins but since I had my mp3 player on and just zoned out I forgot to work out what pace I needed to go for the last 15mins to make sure I got to that mark - when I finally snapped out of my zen like state I realised it turned out I had to do my last 2kms at just over 4:00min pace. I'm happy to say that I got my 17km in with 3 seconds to spare.

The plan next Sunday is to go for 100mins and each week I'm going to try and go an extra 10mins. I don't suspect it will be a problem as I felt surprisingly fresh after the run today - the big test will be how the body feels in the morning.

Today:
17kms in 90mins on a 1 incline