Wednesday 6 February 2008

On cloud nine

Went to the gym before work this morning. Marco was up bright and early for a run and I've resigned to the fact there's no sleeping when he's up and about. No rest for the wicked, so I went to the gym to do stretching and core work. I could have went for a run, but I'm not one for running too early. There's even a bit in this month's Runner's World about it: "Your body situation at 6am is poor. Vitually all bodily functions - temperature, lung function and enegy depletion - are at their worst at this hour. To top it off, exercising early will leave you more prone to injury". That's reason enough to wait until this evening me thinks. Not that I need much convincing.

Nine miles on the schedule for tonight. Started from the office and headed round the west end. I usually like to get home for my run on a Wednesday, but the limited street lighting outside the town makes longer runs pretty treacherous.

Was pleasantly surprised when I started, as for the first time in ages it wasn't blowing a gale. Unfortunately my legs didn't share my excitement. I felt I was struggling for the first couple of miles, but looking at the splits it was because I was going too bloody fast! I was desperate to get out of the city centre, so it must have been the-swerving past office workers and queues of traffic that spurred me on. Pretty steady from there on in. Tried to ease off for the last couple of miles, but you know what it's like. You just want to get finished and continute to maintain the overall average pace for the run. Right?

Route: Office, Charing Cross, Dumbarton, Crow, Southbrae, Anniesland, GWR, St George's, Charing Cross and back to the house of pain. Finished the 9.16m (distance from Garmin through SportTracks) route in 1:12:10.

Pace per mile as follows: 7:29, 7:55, 8:08, 7:57, 7:49, 7:48, 7:53, 8:08, 7:41. Average pace was 7:52. Covered 5.94 miles in my 10K PB time. I'm totally chuffed to bits with that. I don't know whether is was the non-windy evening, concentrating on my running form or listening to crazy tunes on Rock radio, but I even felt like I had loads in the tank at the end.

Tried out my new radio remote for my ipod tonight. Yes, it's another gadget that's been in the box for a month. Nifty wee bit of equipment. I'm a big fan of radio, as it means someone else chooses the tunes for me. I'm just waiting for the day that someone invents an all-in-oner that includes all the perks of a Garmin, ipod, radio, mobile, camera and camcorder. And if it could pour me a glass of red at the end of run, then my life would be complete.

3 comments:

Brian Mc said...

I use the extra risk of injury excuse er reason not to run too early in the morning too!

Marco Consani said...

I have found that the extra chance of injury excuse works for all times of the day!!!

Debs M-C said...

Especially when you tell your wife you'll be home at 7am, but appear dripping in mud an hour late!