Showing posts with label long run. Show all posts
Showing posts with label long run. Show all posts

Sunday, April 4, 2010

technical difficulties

Today was one of those days that I planned to go one way, and ended up going another. Not that uncommon I suppose, but when you are planning to go for a jog, you don't really expect it to deviate *too* far from plan. Right?


The run itself was not too bad, not great, but fairly average. Truth is, I can't really say whether it was a good run or not, owing to issues that I had with my iPhone app - RunKeeper. I think that I ran around the 20km mark, though I'll never really know for sure I suppose. And it doesn't really matter either.


My first issue came when E called from New York to tell me that she had landed (this wasn't an issue mind, I just want to make that clear). I now know that if your phone rings while you are running, the application suspends its GPS and ceases timing. I had managed to run about 1km in the time that I was speaking to E, so that was a fair chunk missing right there.


When I re-started the activity on the application, it then decided not to play music for me any more, and my headphones simultaneously conked out, so I could barely hear the application prompting me for distances and paces. Which meant that I was basically running with my phone for no reason at this stage.


Periodically I would take the phone from my arm to check distances in order to ensure that I ran around the 21.1km that I had intended to run, and that worked to a degree. At around the 17km mark however (a time at which I was tracking ahead of schedule to run a PB for the Half Marathon distance), I must have stopped the application, because it ceased timing again. 


So I don't have an accurate timing or distance measure for this morning, which made me kind of cranky; but it was user error I suppose. My achilles are feeling a bit sore now that I've had the chance to have a bath, stretch and Dencorub up a bit. My hips were quite sore as I was running, which is just another thing to keep an eye on. 


Strength session tomorrow, but beers in the meantime at the folks place.






Extra note: If to prove my point; I have a somewhat sore throat from screaming at my computer, owing to the difficulty in posting the map above. Technology hates me today. I'm not going anywhere near the washing machine. Sounds like a good excuse to me.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Sunday is Funday.

Sunday is long, slow run day - the best running day of the week. It's the time for breaking distance barriers, pushing myself, and, most of all, having more than a little bit of time to get into my own head and just get out there and run. Today was great.

Today was my 90 minute run according to the program I am using, and I went 16.01km at an average pace of 5:48/km, though this would have been much higher had I not run a 7:09 last kilometre. Stop lights are the bane of my running existence, and I got whacked with a particularly big one during my last kilometre. Seemingly, my iPhone application didn't pick up on me jogging back and forth and just kept the clock running. Oh well.

The most important thing I suppose to me today was that though I am aiming to run at a marathon pace of 6:00/km, I quite comfortably ran at around 5:45/km for the majority of the distance without feeling the need to lift up or slow down. It felt great. I really feel right now that a sub-4 hour marathon is within grasp, even though I know I have a long way to go (about 26 kilometres!).

Injury watch went well, with the only issue being that the calves were quite tight over the first few kilometres, but settled down after that. By the end, I was cruising, and could have gone for a fair bit more, but after my adventures during the week with running hard, I didn't want to push the risk of an injury. So, smart running will get me to the finish line at Southport - not hard running.

I also stepped up another gear in my running craziness by buying some protein powder from a health food shop to help with recovery. I'm so lucky to have such a supporting wife (who should be being supported by me, given she is doing a Master of Arts by research), who insists that I buy things like protein powder and looks after my nutrition. I'm a lucky, lucky guy.

Tried something new with the music situation today, to assist in avoiding any more white guy rap moments that may cause some further undue embarrassment. I went with a bit of movie score action for early on in the run (the first 5km), opting for 'The Gladiator Suite' by the Prague Symphony Orchestra, and then 'Duel Of The Fates' by the indefatigable (great word) John Williams. Worked well, and 'All These Things I've Done' by The Killers also went down great. I'm starting to get my music groove well and truly spot on.

I'm disappointed to say that I won't be undertaking any competition runs any time over the next three weeks or so, owing to lack of funds. I really wanted to run the Canberra Half Marathon, or perhaps even the Geelong Half Marathon - but it looks like I am going to be dirt poor over the next few weeks, so I shall behave myself instead.

Well, the next week shapes up to be rest week according to the program, so I have to resist the urge to push on, lest I hurt myself. Sunday 6th June is what it is all about in this training, I can't wait to go the 3 hours (which at my current pace will be around 32km) and be ready for this thing.