New Shoes
I have chipped away at everything that scares me... gyms with lots of people
in close proximity... speed work & intervals, why would anyone deliberately hurt themselves like that? hills? oh why??
But there I have been, on a weekly basis ticking off my sessions. Building up my TM speed work one teeny point at a time, to say the least, that is taking a while. Hills are now up to 8 per session. I started at 3. Long runs are my fun day. I am planning each run a week in advance, looking forward to it and so far enjoyed every single one.
Another fun part of training and motivation had been Jantastic. I entered as part of The WHW team that John Kynaston was pulling together. This has been great motivation. I only entered 3 runs per week for January then 4 for February. My LSR, Interval & Hill sessions. February I added a dog jog. I am still sitting at 100%. My timed run for March is going to be my first ever Park Run. Eglinton Park. Almost looking forward to that!
Since my leg break last year my training has changed massively. Being unable to run for so long then only being able to do strength work & spin/stepper for the first few months to build up changed my mind set that many miles were best. Now I spend more time in that horror hole called a gym than I do on the roads. Weights are cool, now almost squating my body weight. That would be so much easier if I could loose a few pounds!! Doing the dips and pull ups, assisted of course but getting nearer my body weight for that too. Spinning is cool, hard work, cycling through treacle is fun. My favourite killer machine is the stepper... I'm building up the floors and speed, sweating like a sweaty thing, suffering like never before and sadly I'm loving it. So that leaves only 4 days for running but I take one as rest.
So my long runs. Wee adventures with Munro. Stinchar Bridge, Crainlarich (Stan), Tyndrum (Fling weekend), Whitelees oh and this year a recce to Sunderland with Davie Bell reading the ipad map thingy, we meet some like minded English guys who we couldn't understand and them us. That didn't stop any of us and we set off from Osmotherly to recce the Hardmoors course. Davie was doing the 26.2 trail marathon and also the 110 later on in the year, I'm doing the 55 which is now only 17 days away.. gulp.
But as luck had it, this was the first weekend of all that snow!! this kind of hampered our progress and we managed 19 miles with a huge part merely falling / slipping / tramping our way through 2 ft + snow drifts. It was much fun and a good work out for the legs although I'm still not much surer of the route but sh*t happens.
The Hardmoors have quite a lot of mandatory kit after some seriously cold weather in the past. Only 2 drop bags but one checkpoint has hot food. I think I have all the necessary including my heatsheet bivvy bag. I have never even heard of such stuff before! I have been told lots of people enter the 55 with the aim to see how far they can get. Well I aim to finish it... as my tent and car will be at the end (bar open in football club too) not Xing anything, just going to try my hardest and know that I did my best. Anything less will not be good enough.
I used to run because it was fun and my training stopped the minute it started hurting. Not anymore.
Safe running
Karen & Munro
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