Polishing up the run training picture

On the way home drive-by of Arundel Castle from the South East

Polishing up the run training picture                                   

It was the third week in April that we introduced a new run into our triathlon training schedule. We have been on a steady build of runs during this horrible time when the only reason we left the house at all was to go for a run. Before that we had slowly done a little more and a little more running during the period then when we were not able to go swimming with all the pools and leisure centres closed.

Previously when work was part of our lives there was less time for training although we have historically always done our training in the mornings, apart for the club swim session on Saturday afternoon. Its all changed now of course. However, we are both agreed that it is a much nicer life style with Steve home most of the time and we quickly started to feel much better in ourselves without long hard work days and/or long driving days that started early and finished late. Stretching and mobility had been neglected because with only so much time something has to give.

Apart from the fact that we have not gone away anywhere for the pleasure of our planned event season, it is just like being on holiday. We are nicely rested and have time to loosen up tired old over worked muscles.

So upping the running was the choice. We played with the new idea quite a bit with a lot of 6 milers and a few 4 mile runs building up the weekly load. We were doing more 10 km per week as well. Loads of classes on TV kept us nice and loose and relaxed instead of tightening our muscles. We have to bear in mind are not young any more. Early nights and no outings also helped.

The first time we threw in the new eight mile run on April 21st that Steve had carefully planned to be in a quite different area from the usual, it was fairly slow 2.09.17,  yet for us it was something to smile about. We did the same run again two days later in 1.56.48.

After the after the third, forth and fifth eight mile run during the first half of May, we slipped in a half marathon, a distance that we had not done in training at all this year. We would have done on that week in Ironman Graz, Austria, had it not been postponed until next year. We were very happy with that run.

On June 9^th after a complete rest day, we ran our usual Sunday run route; that is just short of 10 km, to a point that was five miles out, so fairly close to the usual finish. We  there turned around, and ran the whole route that far backwards to making a nice ten mile run for a change.

Our run this morning was the third best of the eleven eight mile runs that we have done during lockdown. The only downside of more than doubling our weekly run mileage average to 25-28+ miles is that our turbo training has been harder, but that was to be expected.  According to the Garmin Forerunner read out, we have run 30.5 miles in the last seven days. 

We have enjoyed the very early time schedule enormously, and the especially early alarm call to mark the summer Solstice was rewarded ten fold with the best sunrise we had seen this year. This photo was just the start of the spectacle.

We had half expected the cloud cover to blot the whole thing out, but it was gob-smackingly awesome. The fact than half an hour later, we were totally drowned didn’t even begin to spoil the thrill of that view; right at the top of the South Downs near Parham. We were stopped in our tracks with the beauty of the sky that had turned into a wall of fire, even though it darkened over soon afterwards. We were prepared to get wet on that run and Steve had put a big pile of  bath towels in the back of the van and we both took our two dripping squelchy top layers off as soon as we got back and just wrapped ourselves in the a couple of bath sheets size towels. We had to ring out our things before chucking them in the back. We were still back home again before any of our neighbours were up, so no funny looks at the towel clad pair of us entering our garage. We climbed in our hot tub and sat there until we warmed up again.

We didn’t do much else on the Solstice day but we did watch a movie recommended in an email from the BBC on i-player. It was Andrew Garfield in a film called 99 Homes. The movie got the ‘Different’ vote, and had us both saying that he was so marvellous in that quite uncomfortable story, that we had better look out Hacksaw Ridge, that had blown all the critics away and got him a truck load of nominations. We had missed that entirely due to our life and pressure of work at the time that it was out in cinemas. We intend to catch it as soon as we can now.