I was unsure what to do this morning as I thought I would be training on my own. I had a fartlek to do but I thought Brett was still going to be down in Phoenix so I was going to drive down to Sedona and do the workout there on the track and then get into the creek afterwards. I decided to stay in town and just drive over to Trina’s loop to see who would be about. As I was driving there I saw Brett jogging down the road so I beeped the horn, pulled into Late For The Train, tied my shoes and joined him on his warm up. He was doing the same workout so I was glad of that. He had jogged down from his house so he was just finishing up his warm up so I only really got 13 mins of running in before I jumped back into the car and drove it to the start of the loop and put my flats on. I felt fine although my achilles was a little creaky to start with but it soon warmed up and I didn’t feel it again after the first 2 reps. The workout wasn’t supposed to be a difficult one and it felt pretty good just to be striding out. We covered about 6.5 miles during the fartlek so once we were finished I changed back into my trainers and ran with Brett back up to his house. I continued on for another 30 mins as I was to run for 90 mins total. I got back, did some drill and enjoyed doing my stretching on the dry grass outside of Trina’s house.I drove back to the house, had breakfast and then had a really good nap. I hadn’t got a nap in during the day since Thursday so this felt really refreshing. I woke up with a dead arm and had trouble pouring my coffee into the mug! I had a really good navel orange and set about replying to my emails and emptying my inbox. I noticed that the sun was still out but the wind was blowing so I was trying to figure out where I could run that wouldn’t be too windy. As I had to go to the gym anyway, I decided that I would run from there and see if Woody Mountain Rd was clear yet (this is a great dirt road but it is shaded so it usually stays snowy and muddy for a while). I parked at the gym and ran over to WMRd and was pleasantly greeted by a dry(ish) dirt road and saw Carlson’s car parked there. It felt so good to be running on a softer surface for once although I did have to jump from side to side on occasion to dodge the mud and puddles. As I got ready to turn around at the 5 mile mark I saw Carlson coming towards me so we ran back together which made the time fly by. The last 10 mins was on the road but as soon as I got to it, my friend Rob approached me on his bike and he kept me company for the rest of the run. Rob’s wife is going through chemotherapy and has one last bout left before she is completely finished with it all and she is celebrating this by running the Big Sur Marathon on the same day as the London marathon. She is inspirational on how she is taking the cancer head on just getting on with it and not letting it get in the way of her life. She has been positive about the whole thing and running the marathon is her way of saying goodbye to it all. We’re all planning on getting together the weekend after and celebrating it all. I got back to the gym and did some drills and strides in the car park before I headed inside to get on with my weights routine. I felt pretty good in the gym and the exercises were coming easy to me so I took that as a good thing and stopped before I did too much and wake up sore the next day.
I got back home and Julie cooked up a great meal of marinated turkey, polenta (with fontina cheese added) and some asparagus. It was delicious and just what I needed after a long day’s training.
On another note, I got invited to a 10km road race in Richmond on Saturday and after talking to Greg about it we decided to go for it so I now leave for Richmond on Thursday and race on Saturday morning. This means that we will move the planned 30km tempo run to the next weekend. I’m looking forward to racing again and get my juices flowing again. I always like to race when I’m getting ready for big races and this 10km will serve that purpose. Now we have to decide what kind of training to do on Wednesday but I am going to look over my training diary and Greg and I will discuss what kind of session will be the best for me.
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