Week 2 .....and a bit

I kicked off the second week of abuse with a slightly longer distance run, sunday, a good day for a longer run and ideally along a more interesting daytime route. The day didn't quite pan out as planned though and after spending the day DIYing, a later than expected start meant I would have to stick to a lit street route.
I managed 6.35m (10.3km) in 48.02min which I was happy with considering it was at the end of a week of running, something I have never before subjected my body to.

Monday was the first day of my self prescribed 12 week training schedule for the Reading Half Marathon, again a short recovery day after the first longer Sunday run, I had a bit of trouble with the new Garmin watch which is taking a while to sink with the satelites, I bet Mo Farah doesn't have these problems.
I found I was a bit tired and managed only a steady run but legs seem to be holding together well despite no rest. (3.5 mile 5.6km 26.53min)

Tuesday Day 13 and I managed to get out before dark for a nice run out to Woldingham School and back, 6.2m (10km). I really didn't feel like it, for the first time, my legs now were starting to feel weary and the first couple of miles were quite stiff, but I sped up for the middle section and made my target time of 8min/miles. Definately a more enjoyable run in daylight and I felt quite good especially after 3 miles. The run finishes with a steep sharp hill, though, and I managed to keep running up it even though my feet felt like they were running on the spot. (6.2 mile 10km 48.31min)

I scheduled two steady short runs for the next two days and I'm glad I did because my legs were feeling pretty wrecked by now. On Wednesday I bumped into two friends half way round and had a rest while I chatted for a couple of minutes. This was probably quite fortuitous as I did start to speed up at about this point and would probably have overdone it. (3.5 mile 5.6km 26.58min including the stop so definately faster)

Thursday, day 12, was a very busy day and, for sure, there is no way this run would have happened if I hadn't had an unbroken 11 runs in 11 days, I forced myself out the door despite having loads to do and feeling quite tired. I was rewarded with a really mild evening run, t-shirt and no gloves. During the run I did start to feel a bit faster again.(3.5 mile 5.6km 25.55min)

Friday 13th was true to form, I was busy and a bit slow to get out the door bearing in mind we were going out with friends. We were due to go out at 7.05pm and I managed to get running at 6.10pm. I was due to do a 6ish mile run and this would take about 48 minutes.....D'oh that left me with 7 minutes to recover, shower and change, I would need at least 10 minutes to get myself looking my normal fabulous self.....shut it!.....so it was not going to work. I decided to shorten the run slightly from the normal 6.35 miles to gain a couple of minutes, you can see the precisly planned way by which I live my life can't you......actually it would be more accurate to say 'last minute' way, but please just go along with it.
The run was a bit of a disaster, cars turning in front of me at every junction, unable to cross a couple of roads due to traffic and to top it all, I went down a wrong road and had to make a U turn, idiot. Any way I got back with minutes to spare, had the fastest shower on record, didn't even get wet, and shot out looking like a million dollars, zimbabwe dollars. (5.85 mile 9.5km 44.39min)

Saturday, day 14, Riddlesdown parkrun was to be my well earned rest day, I had promised to run with my children, Lauren and James after James had had a dog jump up at him the previous week giving him a fright.
They decided to do one lap of the two lap course despite my gentle persuation so we ran together until the halfway point, I did speed up for the second lap but I must say I had no life in my legs at all and in fact my lower legs felt quite painful. (3.1 mile 5km 28.46min)
I had to cut short my visit to the Good Companions afterwards, unfortunately, as I had a job to do at 11am, which then cancelled #@$&@!

Today is day 15, Sunday and my Reading Half Marathon schedule, which I had compiled while relaxing with legs up in an armchair, dictated that I do at least 8 miles today, didn't seem such a good idea at 7pm when I finally got my running shoes on. Still I do need to start upping...uping....up-ing.....increasing the distance if I don't want to die on the last few miles of the HM. To make matters worse, I have also entered the Brighton HM which is sooner (19 Feb) but there is no way I will have done adequate preparation for this one....which is ironic as I have been constantly nagging my best mate and junior school buddy, Andy, to keep up his training for this one (which I talked him into). He is new to running and has been on a very ambitious forced training regime as I have roped him into progressively longer runs. Well done mate, Ultra marathon next year, OK?
Oops, I digress, todays run was good, despite the freezing temperature, I completed my 8 miles, 8.5 in fact, in my target time of 8min/miles. My lower legs were still feeling sore for the first half but I felt better later and was really pleased that I had pushed up the distance, 10 miles next weekend.

Well what a week 34 miles in total, just a couple of miles short of a record for me and 64 miles for the month. Definately gonna make that 100 mile target for the month and as long as I don't injure myself I feel like I have a great chance of Janathon success, and if you had told me that at Christmas I would have exploded with laughter spraying the room with wine and chocolate.