16 km Done

Well, I managed a 16km long run last weekend - but I have to say it was HARD, really HARD. I hit the wall at about 14 kms, but its just lucky I'm such a stubborn person because I wouldn't give in to my sore feet and dead on my feet legs. Lots of mental persuasion later I clocked up the 16kms after 1hr 41mins. Pretty well dead on for the time I'm aiming for, but given how much my legs instantly siezed making it very hard to walk - I've been left wondering how I will manage the 21 kms on May 6th. Well sort of. Nothing will stop me from achieving it, but its more about how much pain am I going to have to endure to get there!

So I've had some thoughts/done some reading/planned some more. Firstly, my run wasn't helped by dancing for three hours the night before in ridiculously high heeled shoes - woke up with sore legs to start with - Lesson One - rest before a long run.

Secondly - the seizing up of my legs is probably related to a build up of lactic acid which can be prevented by slowing down my run, or taking walk breaks as my body learns to burn fat more effectively (or something like that can't recall all the exact details), and dehydration, as I didn't drink at all during the 100 mins.

Thirdly - haven't eaten in the morning - or during the run - which is now quite long - blood sugar levels probably quite depleted.

So here's my plan. I've read in many places that beginners should walk through the drink stations, and Jeff Galloway swears that if you put in walk breaks you will reduce lactic acid build up. So in my 17 kms training run next weekend, I'm going to walk for 1 minute after every 5 kms (there are drink stations every 5kms in the race), and drink some water, and some energy gel. I'm hoping that this will keep me hydrated, give me energy boosts and prevent the build up of lactic acid which is tiring out my legs! And then I will just see if this makes a difference! After all, thats what training runs are for, right? To try out different strategies and see what works? I don't really want to walk in the race, but I'm keen to see how much difference this makes, and apparently it costs you very little in time, plus if it keeps you more energised, it can prevent you from losing speed towards teh end, so may actually assist with my overall time. AND I'm only talking about walking for 3 mins in total. Well - we'll see. It may just help me adjust to the long distances and I wont need it on the day???? We'll see.

Anyway - with my running plans sorted out - thought I'd post a few piccies from the 70's night that I went to last Saturday. The great thing was that I really enjoyed dressing up and having my photo taken - a far cry from the past life of dreading having to find dress ups and go anywhere near a camera.

And yes, the guy in the photo with the long hair is my hubby - my parents didn't even recognise him in the photos!

And I had to take a photo of my shoes. The day of the party - I walked into my local op shop (l live in a tiny country town) and to my absolute amazement they had these incredible platform shoes ($2) and seventies flared jeans - with splits down the front - AND it all fitted perfectly - AMAZING!!!!!

So here it all is....

Bits and Bobs

Well - managed 15 kms this morning - a fine recovery I reckon after a migraine Thursday night (so bad it affected my vision) and thumping residual headache Friday. threw in a weights session Friday night (much to hubby's dismay), and then got up and ran this morning with a troubled tummy, which thankfully went away once I started. I think I'm having to deal with a fair bit of anxiety the night before the long runs - don't know why, but I woke up in the middle of the night as tense as anything, practically doubled over in the middle and thoughts of ...well.... I'm not sure really, something to do with fine tuning my training or the way I run each km. Mmmm - I think I'm just weird. It could also be that my abs were sore from the upper body workout I did (shoulders, chest and back) as I had worked my abs hard stabilising for the heavy weights - but who knows. It all went away in the end.


Last few kms were quite hard - my feet were killing me! My toes in particular. I was running with a new pair of sandshoes (same shoes, just newer version) - I'm hoping it was just related to "running" them in. Once I stopped running - they didn't hurt at all to walk - of course walking hurt all on its own as my hammies did a little "we've had enough we're packing up and going home" dance of their own!





Wore my hr monitor for this one - averaged 150/160 bpms - interesting, I didn't think my heart rate was getting anywhere near this for my long runs - because truth be known - I find the breathing quite comfortable. I guess this is a sign of increased fitness when 85 - 90% MHR doesn't puff you out!





Have had an interesting time with eating lately. I think I may have found some balance. I've been away a lot - and eaten a lot of take away and "treat" type foods, and haven't really gained a thing. My weight seems to be relatively stable, varying within about a 2kg range. Whilst I'm away or on special occasions I allow myself treats and "normal foods" and when I'm home, I stick to the clean healthy eating (5 small meals, low fat high protein, 1200cals). And I think that whilst I keep up a very active exercise routine, this may work for me. Yes, I could stand to lose another 5 kgs, but the reality is that I'm happy the size I am now. I'm happy with the way I look, the way clothes fit me (I can wear almost everything), my healthiness, the functional benefits of being smaller (like fitting comfortably in plane seats etc), the fact that I'm not overweight etc etc. If I can lose another 5 kgs over the next twelve months - well that's a bonus. I'm just going to enjoy where I'm at now.





Oooh - and I have a new gadget!

Yes its the new little Ipod Shuffle, and thats a battery next to it so you can see how little it is, and its sitting on its equally tiny docking station! The beauty of this one is that its a bit like a clothes peg - and you can just clip it onto your clothing/hat/sunglasses - anywhere you want! I found the arm band's chaffed, and its really hard to find shorts with coin pockets, and if you do - then you can't run with your phone! So I picked this up with my Fly Buy points and ran with it this morning - IT WAS FAB - i had great music and really enjoyed. And doubly gadgety cool?? I managed to take this photo with my phone and then "beam" it to my laptop using bluetooth. No cords required! Agghhh - can you tell I'm gadget obsessed!

Now I'm recovering quite nicely from my run - went straight off and spent two hours food shopping, followed by three hours peeling/chopping all my vegies for the fortnight - was feelign a little exhausted so had a shower (oh and I'm now no longer blonde - the shower was a good opportunity for a little colour to fall on my head), and now I'm thinking - maybe I could go do an abs workout tonight - or maybe even a step DVD- havent done one of them in ages......(somebody hold me back!) and Donna - I think we're becoming twins!

Btw - Sharon James if you're scrolling through my blog could you drop me a line? I'm getting worried about you - cant find your blog - can't find any recent messages from you on the cool running site - left you a message there - where are you? Just let me know if you are ok!

Cheers to all!

The Fake Athlete!

We went to watch the Victor Harbour Triathlon last weekend, and then ran the 5km fun run. We went feeling like fairly fit individuals, and left feeling like fake athletes! Jeeez there are some fit people out there. Even the short distance triathlon looked hard, and then there was the olympic distance one, and after you cope with the average fit athlete doing this, there are the elites doing it in amazing times. A 1.5 km swim/40km bike ride/10 km run done in under 2 hours! We're still sort of encouraged to give it a go next year, but man you really feel like the lightweight athlete: training 6 days a week, and then just running a mere 5 kms!

Ah well - I have to consider where I've come from though don't I. The 5 km was an interesting experience. It is my third race. The first was a local, low key 4 km about 10 months ago. It was first time running on the road, and I was terrified I couldn't make the distance. It was very tough, nearly killed me and I just kept concentrating on putting on foot in front of the other. Then it was the 12 km city to bay - also terrified about the distance- and used a walk/run strategy (run for 5mins, walk for 2mins to drop my heart rate). Both big achievements for me. But for this 5 kms I didn't really give it much thought - after all I'm running much longer distances now, I never go out and run anything less than 5kms - so I really just viewed it as another training run for the half marathon, and didn't alter my training schedule at all. (Mistake number one). I ran 14 kms on the Friday as planned, and just hoped that if I had a day off on Saturday I would be recovered enough for Sunday. I also decided that I would like to use the race to achieve a PB - I've always wanted to break the 30 min mark for 5 kms, previous best time about 31 mins - so I thought I'd give it a go.

Did I achieve it? YES - 29:08 - but it was b****y hard and I was really cross with myself.


I went out too hard/too fast without realising it. Ran the first km in 5:15 which I have NEVER done before, not even close. I set my Garmin to show me a pacer man on the screen - ie I told it I wanted to run the 5 kms in 29:30, and it then displayed me and a little pacer man on the screen, and below this it told me how far ahead/behind I was of the pacer man. I good idea I thought, but I had difficulties translating this into running speed. Whilst I was looking down at it thinking - good I'm 168m ahead of schedule, my brain didn't think clearly enough - "168m in 1 km - that's way too fast" and so what happened was that after the 1st km I was buggered! I couldn't work out why I was finding the race sooo hard - when i run this distance all the time.

I had to keep telling myself from there on in to SLOW DOWN or I wasn't going to be able to even finish. About halfway through I finally realised that I really needed to change the display on my Garmin to show my speed, which I did, and this really helped. Looking at my splits and heart rate for the race, my HR was at 168 bpm in the first km, and then this gradually slowed with my speed - down to a far more comfortable 120bpm in the last km.

I could have still achieved this PB, but possibly done better, if not far more comfortably if I had:

• Paced myself appropriately at the beginning, and not been influenced by the crowd
• Respected the distance in a race setting and tapered even a little for it. My legs were soo tired when I ran this, I'm sure the big run 48 hrs beforehand affected this
• Realised how much of an impact even a small increase in speed has on your capacity to cover any distance - and how much this impacts on HR. Basically I was running this race with really tired legs, and a much higher than average heart rate due to running faster - no wonder it was so damn hard!

Agh well - even though I have read this sort of thing on other peoples blogs, I guess experience is the best teacher!

Still - 29:08 - a 2 min improvement over 5 kms - gotta be happy with that!

A New PB!

Ahhhh, its easy to achieve PB's when you are continually increasing your mileage each week to distances you've never covered before! Each one is its own new record.

Just checking in to let you know that I ran 13 kms today in 1:23 - a PB for me because I've never run 13 before.....and I'm still standing!

Cheers