What a glorious feeling, I’m happy again…

Reflection in a puddle of a person holding an umbrella

We’ve had torrential rain here for the last few days, but things are starting to look positive. There’s even some sunshine on the weather map for tomorrow 🙂

Monday morning

The day didn’t start well. Car problems meant that I missed out on the strength and conditioning session that I had been looking forward to. I was so gutted about it – I hope I manage to book a place for next Monday’s session, although I imagine that I’ll be tired after Gosport Half Marathon.

I didn’t have to rush straight to work as I was booked in for a ‘flu jab. I’ve never had one before as I’ve never counted as an ‘at risk’ category. My asthma means that I’m now someone who may be more seriously affected. I really hate needles and have fainted quite a few times when I’ve had to give blood, so I was a bit concerned about it. Fortunately, the nurse at my doctor’s surgery is lovely. It didn’t take too long, although I had to sit still for a few minutes afterwards to ensure that I didn’t keel over!

Monday evening

On Monday evening, I agreed to take Ben’s group at my running club. However, this group consists of the fastest runners in the club. They are seriously fast. Their warm-up jog pace is my flat-out on the track PB pace. Of course, this meant that I wouldn’t be able to run along with them and shout encouragement. It’s a bit cool to stand around for an hour, so I got on my trusty hybrid bike and cycled around with them. Their main set was 6×1 mile reps at HM pace, which was a comfortable slow cycle for me. It was quite nice to be able to encourage them and I also got to see lots of the other runners who were out training.

After finishing off the LRR session, I cycled to the Quays for tri club swimming. There were only three of us in the lane, but I was by far the slowest one. My left arm (where I’d had the injection) was feeling stiff and tired and it was another impossible set – 12 x 25m off 30s. I decided to ignore what we’d been told to do and just did my best for each length before having 5s rest. We also had to tread water for 2 minutes with our hands behind our heads. I’m not sure whether I was doing it wrong, but it felt quite easy. Bizarrely, I received more praise from the coach than I’ve ever had before, even though I didn’t really do much!

Tuesday

On Tuesday, I went to the SUTRI spin class. It was the first time that I had gone to a spinning class for two years and my first ever hour-long class. When I worked at Bournemouth University, I used to love going to lunchtime spin classes. For reasons of time and cost, I’ve not been to any classes since I left BU. I remember that when I started going to classes, I found them completely exhausting.

I was a little concerned about how I would find an hour-long class. Fortunately, all of the time that I’ve spent on a real bike, whether commuting for work or triathlon training, has paid off. I did not struggle with the class. I liked some of the tracks that the instructor played, but I didn’t find the class as motivational as ones that I’ve been to in the past with lots of recognisable recent dance tracks with lyrics. There was also less variety than I’m used to, but I still think it was good and want to go again.

Last week, I went to the SUTRI swimming session on Tuesday evening and I am planning to go again, but I had another commitment on Tuesday evening. Recently, Stu and I had a photoshoot with the lovely Sue and Jules from http://www.julianporter.com/ On Tuesday, we went to have a look at the photos that Jules had taken and decided which one we wanted to have printed and framed. If you are in the south of England and need a photographer, I’d recommend getting in touch with Jules and Sue.

Wednesday

I really love running on the track, so I was looking forward to the Lordshill track session on Wednesday evening. The weather was pretty miserable. I think it’s important to train in all weathers as you never know what race day will be like.

Ben did quite a long warm up and technique session before the main set started. We were tasked with running 200m at 5K pace +10 seconds, followed by 200m at 5k pace. Ben had worked out how fast we should do each rep according to our PBs. I think I was meant to do 200m in 1:10 followed by 200m in 1:00… but I thought it was 200m at 5:10/km followed by 2oom at 5:00/km, which less of a variance. In the end, I did 200m slow followed by 200m fast, which wasn’t really what we were meant to do. I’m not very good at identifying my pace and I couldn’t read my watch. I think I should have probably relied on my lap button more. I’m not sure whether I did 12 or 13 laps. It took me just under 26 minutes, which wasn’t too bad.

What have I been watching?

Garth and Graham at Vankru Cycling shared this fantastic video from Ritte cycles:

Make sure that you watch it to the end!

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