Sweet Sixteen

I've been taking it easy since the start of the week, and the flu's gone now, thankfully. Many thanks to those who left well wishes - appreciate it! I didn't do any running from Monday to Thursday and allowed myself to relax a bit... sometimes it is nice to ease off the accelerator a little. I didn't feel as hassled as I can sometimes get while trying to fit all of life into the space of a day.

Today I felt fine and decided to do a bit of running. My aim was just to run around the park near where we live and do 3 sets of 3 rounds (it's 11/16 of a mile each round) and then run up to 10K. The target time was 20 minutes per set, so if all went well, I would have covered 10K in about an hour. Not exactly anything to worry Paula Radcliffe, but I would have been satisfied with that. After the first set of 3 laps I realised I was doing 5:15 laps, and just worked on maintaining the pace and running consistently. At the back of my mind I thought maybe I'd have a shot at improving my 10K PB time, but that didn't happen, although I ended up with 47 minutes for my 10K. I did, however, keep on running, and eventually squeaked past 8 miles in under an hour, which breaks my "Distance plodded in an hour" mark by 1/4 of a mile. I suppose I might have been on track to break my half marathon time, but I didn't want to push it, and had had enough for the day. To do 8 miles at 7:30 min/mile as an easy "recovery" run, at a heart rate of 140-150bpm... I'll take that, thank you very much. I was so hungry, though, that when I got back, I wolfed down ten and a half ounces of pasta without problems.

I might just squeeze in a light run or a session on the stepper over the weekend. I'm not going to watch the Bedford Autumn Head this year, which is a shame, but I'll at least have the time to check the results, which isn't too bad. There's also the Thames Head, so it looks to be a rowing weekend. Apart from that, the best thing about having done a fairly significant run today is that I'll have the weekend free to do all the groceries and housework so the Mrs won't have to do it and can have her turn at easing off the accelerator of life. Sweeeeeet!

Other notes: Tried downloading some podcasts to listen to, thinking that perhaps listening to stuff while running might be helpful in staying focussed... not only did I discover earphones give my sensitive ears a dull ache, but some of the podcasts... oh God. The content of some of them is about as interesting as water in a dog dish, and the personalities of the podcasters are slightly above the level of "cadaver". I think running and listening to podcasts will always remain separate for me.