Keeping up my good habits

My third consecutive day of blogging – not quite as impressive as Ron Hill’s running streak, but it’s a start. Today I did some ankling and hurdling…

Ankling at Run Camp

After finishing blogging late last night, I managed to pack my lunch, sort out my clothes etc etc in order to be able to cycle to Run Camp this morning. However, cycling to Run Camp meant that I needed to get up earlier. In my opinion, I should only see 5:45 once a day!!!

I arrived at The Common and was delighted to see a full complement of Run Campers. Jenny has returned from her holiday and I finally got to meet Max. This morning’s session started off with the usual warm-up (accompanied by Dillon Small-Smith) before moving to the hill. We were looking at ‘ankling‘ which involved hopping with a straight leg and no heel strike. We did various sets of hops, before moving onto bounding. Then the hurdles came out…

Hurdles

First, we had to run through the hurdles. It is always more challenging than it sounds and often leads to Run Campers looking like Phoebe from Friends! Then we had to hop over the hurdles, changing leg for each one, which looks a lot like just stepping over them. Finally, we had to do squat jumps over the hurdles, without using our arms. I did better than I expected, but fatigue did start to set in.

After the jumpy-hoppy bit, we had to do a 1k run.

1km time trial

I started out quite well. Although I know that I’ve no hope of keeping up with Emily, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was not languishing at the back for a change. We started from the middle of the hill, so the first 250m was uphill, followed by 500m downhill and finishing with 250m uphill. I was level with Jenny at the first turnaround point, which gave me confidence as I love running downhill. I reached the next turning point ahead of Jenny, so knew that I just had to keep pushing myself for the last 250m uphill section. I’ve realised that I am much better motivated if there is a genuine challenge in a run, so I managed to maintain my lead.

Then I looked down at the pace on my watch – 4:52!!! After failing to hit that exact pace for any of my 800m reps on Tuesday, I was delighted that I had managed it for 1k (especially considering that I had run 600m at a much slower pace, which was included in that average).

After Run Camp, I cycled to work and managed to get myself to my desk for 8am, whereas if I head home, I quite often arrive just after 9am. If I leave at 4pm, then it’s probably easier for me to fit in tonight’s dreaded 15-miler. Actually, it’s not so dreaded… Has my running mojo finally returned?

Update

OK, so I didn’t run 15 miles this evening. I had a bit of a break and just went for a comfortable 7 mile run with a couple of friends. I know I’ll have to do it on Sunday, but I’m OK with that!

Also, I had all of the information come through about the Garmin Sharp Ride out that Stu and I won places on. How exciting! More about that later!