« Loop de loop | Main | Accept the challenge or not? »
Burning calories
By Spike (aka "Running for Beer") | October 29, 2007
Saturday October 27th
6m (treadmill) Ave 9:45
Got one of those artificial dawn alarm clocks from Lumie which arrived Thursday. Seemed great. Gradually reduced light at night to give a relaxing wind down. Gradually increased light in the morning for a gentle wakeup. Fantastic. Until I went to set it last night only to find it no longer works. That really lasted well. Not sure I’ll be recommending that to people I like.
It was pretty wet outside today & lots of standing water on the roads. Bearing in mind I’m running tomorrow as well, I decided to get out the tready.
Started off on a rolling hills program and tried to keep to a 9:30 pace. It tuned out to be a bit adventurous for me. I kept it up for the first half, then had to magic away the hills. I knocked the safety cut out a mile or so in, then at 2 miles to go there was a quick power cut. It was enough to stop the machine pretty much dead & jolt me forward. Not best enjoyable.
I was really struggling today, fighting the little voice inside that was saying “that’s enough, go get a beer now”, so I had to try something to give me focus. With 1.25 miles left (5 virtual laps) I decided to try to really force the pace for half a lap, then do a lap at 9 or 10 min miling, then repeat. So I cranked it up to 10mph (6 min miling) and was really surprised I could keep up, and even more that I did so 3 times. Maybe there’s some hope for me to speed up a bit yet.
Sunday October 28th
16m Ave 11:14
(2139 kCal = Big Mac + cheeseburger + fries + 6 pints bitter + tiny pack peanuts)
I’ve sorted out my camel back so could go out on the road up to Habost and back. The weather was generally kind, but the route is not exactly flat and I found it pretty tough going. That said, it was one of my better long runs, so I can’t complain. I would like to go a bit quicker though.
I didn’t look at my watch until one mile from the end. I wanted to get back inside 3 hours and thought I may just have a chance. I haven’t done that on this route before. My tired mind was trying to calculate what I could do in the last mile. As the end of the 15th was approaching, I decided as long as my watch said 2:47, no matter what the seconds, I had a pretty good chance. At the beep I looked and … 2:49 something. Bum. Still, I thought put in a bit of effort and if I can get to half a mile to go with the watch saying 2:54 I was still in with a chance. When it beeped I looked to see it just clicking to exactly 2:55:00. I thought I was going much faster and could ease up a bit for the last half, but now I would have to speed up more. And I had a wet & slippy cattle grid to navigate & one last hill. Still I faced front, concentrated and pulled it out of the bag with 20 seconds to spare.
Just goes to show that very often you are limited by your mind not your body.
Topics: Spike (aka "Running for Beer") |