Illness stopped play :-(

After a great start to January, it didn’t take long for things to go downhill.

On Wednesday lunchtime, my work colleague, Sarah, and I jogged down to Southampton Common where we met a friend from Tri Club, Rob. The plan was to do an intervals session, which was just as well as Rob can run a 17:XX 5k!

We headed up to the model boating lake, which has a smooth tarmac path around it that measures almost exactly 300m. Rob initially planned to do 10 laps, but I knew that I didn’t have enough time to do that many and I was feeling a little under the weather. (I had a sore throat and as I have been struggling with vocal problems since April last year, I am trying to look after  my voice).

After doing a couple of laps, Rob decided that he would aim for 8 laps, and Sarah and I decided to go for 6. My first couple of laps felt quite good, but after that I could feel my technique starting to fail. After four laps I felt tired and was needing longer recovery between laps. By lap six, I felt entirely exhausted and I no longer felt able to pick my legs up properly. When I paused at the end, I felt so hot and was really worried that I would faint, so we walked part of the way back to work, before doing a gentle jog.

On Wednesday evening, I led my first running club session for a long time. I arrived early and waited a short while before runners started to turn up. After a short while, Kirsty and Irene arrived and we were able to get people to sign in. I was staggered by the attendance – there were so many runners, and at least 5 new people.

Kirsty led the first part of the session, which included some walking lunges, clock hops and squats immediately followed by sprints. After that, I led a Mona Fartlek session (named after Steve Moneghetti).

Session: 2 x 90sec, 4 x 60sec, 4 x 30sec, 4 x 15sec. Continuous running.

Total Duration: 20mins including recoveries

*Recoveries are floats of the same duration as the effort prior e.g. after the 90sec reps you continue with a float for 90sec before the next effort starts. Finish the session with a 30sec float. The efforts should be increasingly quicker as the durations get shorter.

Most of the runners took the recoveries as walking breaks as it’s a tough session and it was quite challenging to do it as the first session of the year. Have you ever tried this session?

On Thursday, I had been looking forward to doing a lovely home stretching session with Liz, followed by a spinning class, but I woke up feeling really unwell, so I spent most of the day in bed 🙁

I spent a bit of time online, so I had a look at instagram and saw this which cheered me up:

I can’t wait for my Team SOAS 2016 kit to arrive. I guess it will be in about March. What are you looking forward to this year?

I also learnt about Bounts “a digital health app that literally gets you rewards and prizes from big name brands, right down to free stuff from the local store”. It probably requires hundreds of hours of exercise to get a single voucher, but I figure that if I’m doing the exercise anyway then I might as well log the hours and earn the points. I think Bounts is currently available in UK, USA and India. Have you used it? What do you think?

On Friday, I felt slightly better, but just walking up and down stairs made me wheeze and exhausted me, which was very frustrating. I worked from home as I knew I wouldn’t be able to cycle my bike up the hill from my house. I hoped that I would make a SUTRI swimming session in the evening, but I was ready for bed by 6pm, so that was another session I missed.

For over five years, my Saturday morning routine has included getting up in time to complete parkrun. I had wondered whether I would be able to go along and take it as a gentle jog, but when I woke up, I realised that I was still feeling rough, so I turned over and went back to sleep. Later in the morning, I went out to the kitchen fitters to discuss our proposed new kitchen, which took quite a long time. By the time I got home, I was ready to go to sleep again – just standing up had felt exhausting. I also still had a temperature 🙁

I was so grateful to feel significantly better this morning. My temperature had dropped back to normal and although I felt a little stiff and tired, walking up and down stairs felt normal. It has been so frustrating to be ‘trapped’ in my house, so i decided to go out for a gentle run. I’ve volunteered to be part of the Sunday Runday crew in preparation for Marafun’s ABP Southampton Half Marathon. I had let John know that I might not be well enough to run and that if I did run, I would probably go with a reasonably slow group. As I was feeling much better, I said I would back mark the 10 minute mile group (the middle group).

I can’t say that I found the run easy, but it was lovely to catch up with Jill, Malcolm, Laura, Peter, Kim, Kate and various other friends. I even had enough energy to tackle, the laundry and dishes and to do lots of food prep when I got home, which is such a relief.

I’m hoping that I can get in a full week of training this week, as I have my first race of 2016 on Sunday: Stubbington 10k. I love the email that they sent – it makes it seem like I’ve achieved something simply by entering!

I’ve entered this race several times previously and have blogged about my experiences. It will be interesting to see how my run stacks up against previous times:

• My Stubbington 10k 2015 time (52:10) – 3rd fastest ever 10k after Eastleigh 2013 (52:02) and Eastleigh 2012 (51:06)
• My Stubbington 10k 2014 time (55:17)
• My Stubbington 10k 2013 time (55:14)
• My Stubbington 10k 2012 time (53:03)

I’ll see how it goes on the day, but I’d like to finish in under 55 minutes.

How’s your week been?