Sunday, March 26, 2006

Consolodation

Two weeks ago I continued my schedule as posted in the last entry. That schedule, as you will have seen, ends today. This last week has been a consolodation week. All the training times were reduced to give my body chance to recover and strengthen. Week 3, 2 weeks ago, went well. I managed another swim and some hill intervals again. I had the Saturday off I was on a Track Day, tearing my car around Elvington airfield. Hugely entertaining, scalping a Porsche GT3 was the highlight of the day I think.

Anyway, Sunday I only did 77 mins thinking it was my consolodation Sunday. When in fact, I should have done another 20 minutes. Today was my 77 minute run. Oh well, not to worry. Last Sunday was an enjoyable run. I took the opportunity to explore some areas close to me, little paths that I'd always wondered where they went. It's nice to find out and complete my local-area knowledge more. Gives me more options for future runs.

Tuesday this week I did a 10 minute endurance run down my "Hill". There I did 18 minutes worth of hill intervals. The hill is my usual one, very steep, takes 30 seconds to climb (when fresh). I managed the 18 minutes, my heart rate topping out about 175 at the peak a few occasions. The hill really takes a lot out of you. At the end of the set, I took a couple of minutes to recover. This was a bit of a mistake as my body temperature came crashing down really quickly. I'd left the house without my windproof jacket, hat and gloves, and it was deceptively cold. My body had generated a lot of heat from the hill climbs, but now in recovery mode, I got cold very fast. I started off at a jog to try and get my heat back in, and really struggled. Lucky I was only 10 minutes from home. When I got in I jumped straight in the shower. I couldn't feel the hot water for about 6 ot 7 minutes. I won't make that mistake again!

Wednesday I drove down to my gym and from there did a half hour run in the local area. After that I did a half hour swim. Probably no more than 20 lengths. I trying to improve my technique still, as well as cross train.

Friday was my usual gym strength session, which went well.

Saturday I was due to walk up Mount Snowdon in North Wales with a friend. However the day before, I'd got a mountain weather forcast and took a look at the webcam. The weather look terrible. Here's the information I emailed to my friend.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northwest/sites/webcams/pages/snowdon.shtml
Outlook for Saturday / Rhagolygon ar gyfer Dydd SadwrnAnother fairly poor day likely with further cloud and outbreaks of rain expected. It will be mostly dry through the morning but more persistent and heavy rain will spread up from the south into the afternoon. Again the cloud will be low enough for some pretty widespread hill fog.

We would have arrived around 11am. The clim takes about 3.5 Hours, the decent about 3 hours. We deciced that it would be a little irresponsible of us to walk that day. The web cam showed very low level fog. Walking up one of the UK's highest peaks in fog and heavy rain wasn't going to do either of us any good. We'll look again in about a month when the weather picks up.

Instead I went out for a 1 hour 50 minte walk. A little longer than I intended, but once again I went exploring paths and roads to find out where they went. As predicted the weather was awful. My waterproof jacket, turned out not to be as waterproof as I thought! I got pretty soaked to the point that I ran the last 1.5 miles home! I had also wandered into the middle of a Gypsy camp in an area called Ravenscliffe that I didn't know was there! Oops. I just wandered through and no one bothered me. The surrounding area was a real dump. The roads nearby were full of rubbish; tyres, clothes, wood, refuge, tarmac. You name it. One road was almost impassable to traffic becuase of the mess. Needless to say I'll avoid that area in future!

Today I did my 77 minutes. I ran form my parents house (Mothers day!) up and through Hanchurch woods. Really enjoyed it, never saw a soul in the wood. The rain died off 20 mins in the run so it was very peaceful and relaxing. Wasn't taxing at all, average heart rate about 138 I think, 7 miles.

Tomorrow is the start of the next 4 week cycle. Distances building up again over the next 3 weeks. Speak to you soon.

No comments: