runography

Friday was a rest/xt day so I went off to the gym to do some weights. To warm up I decided to do a light run on the treadmill, just to get the blood flowing. Ended up on there for almost 20 mins and having covered slightly over 2 miles I thought I better get off and get to the weights which is what I was there for in the first place. Besides, I’m meant to do my 2 mile easy run over the w/e. If you’d have told me in January that I’d get accidentally carried away and run 2 miles I would have laughed. 2 miles was a big achievement when I did it the first time, now it’s par for the course.

I followed this with a good session at the gym, and after training at the same level on all machines for quite a while I decided to up the level on each machine by one notch and get my reps in at the higher level. I remember my initiation at the gym back in January, the guy said unless you can do 2 reps of 12 comfortably at a level then you shouldn’t move up to the next level, and I’ve kinda stuck to that.

There is a machine at the gym, the Knee Extender, which when I started I had set at level 8 (not sure of weight), and when I had done 1 rep of 10 I thought my thighs were going to snap, the burning sensation was bizarre. On Friday I did 4 reps of 12 at level 9. I take between 1-2 mins rest between reps, the longer the better as it allows you to complete more reps. I balance my weights between machines that target different areas, but mostly they are upper body workouts since I’m doing a lot of legwork running. I do have to add in the Hamstring weights as I haven’t really done many of them and I think I should balance thigh/hamstring weights before it’s too late.

Saturday was a rest day and I was off to Dundee with Hamilton Accies for the final day of the season. This involved a lot of beer, 6 pints and 6 bottles to be exact and I was home and asleep by 8pm Great day though, I’d taken my 10 year old and we had a great laugh.

Sunday, how I wish I hadn’t drank the day before. I had parked the car in Hamilton the day before and my running shoes were in it, so Ann (my other half) kindly offered to pick up my shoes for me on her way to the supermarket. I wasn’t going to get out of this run then. When she came back I setoff on my 2 mile run from Blantyre, through Burnbank and the outskirts of Whitehill, and up the hill (Burnbank Rd) to where I’d parked the car. It took me 21 minutes and I’m glad I did it as it cleared a lot of the previous days excesses from my system.

After this I managed to fit in

• 12.30pm watching an Old Firm game – Celtic 3-2 Rangers
• 1.00pm having my neice over for her 5th birthday party
• 3pm building her new bike
• 4.00pm exploding the front tyre on her new bike (her face was a picture when I did that)
• 4.30pm going to Halfords to get new inner tube fitted and get the brakes fixed too, I didn’t have time at this point to fix due to next entry
• 5.00pm drive to the Edinburgh Playhouse to watch the Sugababes with Ann and our 10 year old

I’ll maybe delight you with some pictures from the gig later.

Another 4.5 miles over the last few days and the start of another week today. The program has me in for a Speedwork session today. I’m not sure what to do with this one, I think I’ll give it a bash but not sprint the 800m sections, just do a fast run instead. If I can get close to 6:00 min/mi over the 800m sections then that’ll be a big improvement. We’ll find out soon enough I suppose. I’m still not 100% fit