15 Weeks to Go - Warm Up

With the holidays over, the reality of trying to fit five runs a week into normal life is starting to hit home.  I'm lucky that I work part time but even so, the food shopping didn't get done until 4 days later than usual this week.  As for cleaning the house...!

Despite the time constraints, something happened this week which made me realise the importance of warm up and cool down sessions.  Tuesday was a hill session and to fit it in, I went straight from my desk to a local hilly woodland.  We started running without properly warming up (I know, I know!) and it's straight into the hills on this run. On the first hill I felt a sharp pain behind my kneecap and had to stop.  It went quickly but I felt it again less sharply on the second hill.  By the end of the run, there was no pain so I think it was due to my failure to prepare myself to run properly, rather than anything more serious.  Since then I've been doing my knee strengthening exercises regularly.

Last week we didn't run an 'easy' pace on our club night run as we went too quickly during that session and paid the price the next day.  I did some research and, much to the amusement of my fellow runners, found details of what easy, steady, fast, interval etc meant in beats per minute (heart rate) and minute/mile (pace).  On a Wednesday night I spent the whole 4 miler informing the others that we were going too fast and needed to slow down.  The other club runners were very confused as they aren't use to someone shouting 'too fast!' at them!

We decided to split our 40 minute fartlek session on Thursday into 5 minute sessions - easy and fast.  I have to say 'farting' isn't a session I look forward too but I do feel as if I've worked hard after it.  It went better than I'd hoped but my legs felt it the next day!

For our long run this week, we once again went cross country.  It was very mild but the wind was cold and against us for the harder parts of the run.  Our biggest challenge this week was trying to move these cows out of our way!

This week's long run did feel hard work, which is to be expected as we had been running 6 or 7 miles each weekend anyway.  This is the first real increase and a muddy cross country run does take it out of you.  Next week's long run will be a road session, just to make sure we get use to tarmac again.

The plan is for a 3 mile easy cross country session tomorrow morning, with a delayed start of 9am to allow for the fact we've got yet another party tonight. Then a rest day before week 3 starts.