Wild 'n wooly

I was lucky enough to spend the end of the week on the coast. It rained pretty much the entire time. Including straight after these photos were taken! It was my first wear of the Vibrams since returning from overseas. My feet while a touch cold (along with everything else) felt good on the sand. I love that they leave a barefoot print.

Run: 22m 49s | 3.29km | 06m 56s/km. Seriously hard work with the blowing gale and soft sand. This did include 10x 30s efforts/30s recovery jog.

There's no hiding

Time trials don't lie. Gosh, it was tempting to put this off, you know, to swap sessions. To do this another day, but I sucked it up. I thought of yesterday's post and got it done. And while it hurt, it only hurt for a bit. Or 3kms worth.

Run: 29:22 | 5.03km | 5m57s/km.
Including time trial: 16:43 | 3km | 5m 34s/km. I got increasingly slower as the kms went by. I hoping next time to be a little bit faster and a little bit more consistent. As tough as I find time trials, it is nice to have a benchmark. I can only improve from here.

Note to self: don't put it off

I pulled up pretty well from Friday's long run. Saturday was a planned rest day and I had the choice of Sunday or Monday to do my speed session, in the end I put it off until Monday. Which was fine until I was incapacitated by an upset stomach. Lesson learned.

Back on track today.

Better news on the weight front, as a result of cutting out 'lussert' (dessert after lunch) that was so prevalent while I was away and eating lighter/smaller meals in general I've managed to shed a kilo.

Run: 50min | 7.76km |06m 29s/km. Scheduled "comfortable run". HR indicates otherwise. An average of 172. Oops that's a little too high. Felt alright though, had my faster kms towards the end of the run.

Going long

While overseas the season was coming out of winter and into spring. I was surrounded by green, so seems odd to see the leaves turning like I did on this morning's run. Odd, but still beautiful.

So with regards to the marathon, I've decided to follow the training as per the Gold Coast marathon website. I've jumped straight in and will follow the program. With one change. Long runs on a Friday. It makes sense because it means I can make the most of my weekend with the Man and friends instead of spending two (plus) hours running and the rest of the day in a semi zombie state!

Run: 2:01:04 | 18km | 6m44s/km. I knew this was going to be tough. But I made it harder on myself for two reasons. The gap between breakfast and running was too big and one gel wasn't enough. As a result I really battled from 1:30, but the last 15min were the toughest. I had to stop and walk. Not enough energy at all. I was running with my fuel belt, it's not like I couldn't have put another gel in there. Lesson learned! Added bonus, no asthma. The puffer beforehand helped.

Wed; run: 1:00 | 9km | 6m40s/km. I was hoping for better things on my first run back in town. Having not had any asthma for months it caught be by surprise on this run. I slowed myself down considerably and focused on running with a lower HR than I usually would to minimise discomfort.

Home, sweet home

We touched down in Melbourne this morning at 6:00am. After 23 or so hours flying and about four hours sleep it's lucky my eyes are still open.

I've been catching up on washing, removing two months of accumulated dust and going through my mail. My race number came for the end of month half marathon I entered prior to leaving. A nice reminder that I've got to get back into running consistently from tomorrow.

I am seriously questioning the wisdom of running a marathon in two months time. In fact I'm more than a little nervous. Fingers crossed. I'm optimistic because I have time on my side - in that I'm not working and there should be no excuses with regards to getting training in and I'm no longer carrying an injury (I had some major foot pain prior to leaving). The downside being that all the eating out we did was not good for my weight. I'm a couple up from when I left. And the one or so run I did a week wasn't quite enough to maintain the fitness. Here's to a challenge!

I plan to post retrospectively, because in between all the eating I was able to run, get on a bike, take a hike or two and do a whole lot of walking.

Retrospective post: Just for fun

On the last day of our trip I decided to wear my Garmin just to see how much ground we covered on a light walking day. It was Sunday, we were in cruisy sightseeing, market visiting and stopping for an ale mode. According to Garmin, a total just shy of 12 km. I'll call it 8.5, given we took the train from London bridge to Green park.

Retrospective post: Arthurs Seat, Edinburgh

Sure there was a royal wedding on, but my interest was focused on climbing Arthur's seat in Holyrood park at the edge of Edinburgh city. It offers some awesome (if not windy) views. We spent a couple of hours hiking/walking/photographing up, down and around.