Exercise and fitness are so much easier when I'm not up to my ears in work stress. How's that for a really obvious piece of insight?
I've been keeping up with the half marathon training plan, which is just as well since the race is a week from tomorrow. Today was the last longish training run, and despite a marked lack of enthusiasm for a nearly-two-hour run I ended up enjoying it. We had the first day of weekend sunshine for a while, and I had new shorts to try out, and the whole run went by rather more quickly than I thought it would.
It's been really obvious these past few weeks, since the workload started climbing again in early April, that my workaholic brain is not at all happy with the idea of my taking time for such frivolities as running. To be honest, had it not been for the training plan and the half marathon I'd signed up for, it is very unlikely I would have kept running as regularly as I have, and the majority of the last four weeks' training sessions have been completed more or less under protest. They were, nevertheless, completed, and I tell myself that this is what will count next Sunday. The prediction tables suggest that (based on my 10K in April) I should be able to run it in 1:55 or so, and so that is my immediate goal. At the very least I want to come in under 2 hours, and I have about 90% confidence that I can barring any disasters.
Since blogging about all this has fallen by the wayside, I completely failed to mention here the Flughafenlauf, a 17km race I ran on the 9th. Mike's race report sums it up pretty well; as for me I started off way too fast thanks to that downhill but held up more or less okay until 14km, when I just wanted very badly to stop running. I took an extra-long break at the final water station and then resumed running, only to be overtaken by a bunch of people in the last kilometer due to a nasty little steep hill that I just had no energy left for. What surprised me, though, is that I ran the last 3 km almost the same speed as the rest, even though it felt like I had dropped my pace at least a minute per km. At any rate I got to the finish line with the supremely annoying time of 1:35:00.7, unable to summon even a little bit of finishing sprint.
Sophie has become rather the enthusiast for her parents' running; she cheered me on from Mike's shoulders as I set off (his age group started 45 minutes after mine) and, when I finished, she broke free of the friend who was watching her in order to worm her way into the finishing chute and find Mummy and give me a great big hug! This was of course extremely sweet but also a little less than convenient, as I needed rather desperately to sit down and find some water and allow the vaguely sick feeling to pass. In the end I found a nice patch of grass and she entertained herself by holding my race number to her chest and pretending to run in a race of her own. We're thinking maybe we should enter her in a suitably short (250m) kids' race that will take place in August.
As for swimming and cycling, well, not much has happened on that score. I tried to start ramping them both up in April, and went to exactly one swimming session of the triathlon club before the silly season of travel interfered with my attending any more. That particular session has now been cancelled for the summer and I haven't made it to the somewhat less convenient one that started this week. It was pretty shocking when I did go to see that I'd lost pretty much all the meager swimming form I had built up between November and January. I'll have to see what I can build up again starting in June, I suppose. My cycling form is not in such a dire state, but after that lovely ride that was the subject of my last post, every single weekend has been disgusting, weather-wise, so I haven't had a chance to repeat it.
I still want to target an August triathlon, and I'll be able to scale back the running after I return from Leiden. I just hope the workaholic brain actually allows me to get to the pool and on the bicycle often enough.
I've been keeping up with the half marathon training plan, which is just as well since the race is a week from tomorrow. Today was the last longish training run, and despite a marked lack of enthusiasm for a nearly-two-hour run I ended up enjoying it. We had the first day of weekend sunshine for a while, and I had new shorts to try out, and the whole run went by rather more quickly than I thought it would.
It's been really obvious these past few weeks, since the workload started climbing again in early April, that my workaholic brain is not at all happy with the idea of my taking time for such frivolities as running. To be honest, had it not been for the training plan and the half marathon I'd signed up for, it is very unlikely I would have kept running as regularly as I have, and the majority of the last four weeks' training sessions have been completed more or less under protest. They were, nevertheless, completed, and I tell myself that this is what will count next Sunday. The prediction tables suggest that (based on my 10K in April) I should be able to run it in 1:55 or so, and so that is my immediate goal. At the very least I want to come in under 2 hours, and I have about 90% confidence that I can barring any disasters.
Since blogging about all this has fallen by the wayside, I completely failed to mention here the Flughafenlauf, a 17km race I ran on the 9th. Mike's race report sums it up pretty well; as for me I started off way too fast thanks to that downhill but held up more or less okay until 14km, when I just wanted very badly to stop running. I took an extra-long break at the final water station and then resumed running, only to be overtaken by a bunch of people in the last kilometer due to a nasty little steep hill that I just had no energy left for. What surprised me, though, is that I ran the last 3 km almost the same speed as the rest, even though it felt like I had dropped my pace at least a minute per km. At any rate I got to the finish line with the supremely annoying time of 1:35:00.7, unable to summon even a little bit of finishing sprint.
Sophie has become rather the enthusiast for her parents' running; she cheered me on from Mike's shoulders as I set off (his age group started 45 minutes after mine) and, when I finished, she broke free of the friend who was watching her in order to worm her way into the finishing chute and find Mummy and give me a great big hug! This was of course extremely sweet but also a little less than convenient, as I needed rather desperately to sit down and find some water and allow the vaguely sick feeling to pass. In the end I found a nice patch of grass and she entertained herself by holding my race number to her chest and pretending to run in a race of her own. We're thinking maybe we should enter her in a suitably short (250m) kids' race that will take place in August.
As for swimming and cycling, well, not much has happened on that score. I tried to start ramping them both up in April, and went to exactly one swimming session of the triathlon club before the silly season of travel interfered with my attending any more. That particular session has now been cancelled for the summer and I haven't made it to the somewhat less convenient one that started this week. It was pretty shocking when I did go to see that I'd lost pretty much all the meager swimming form I had built up between November and January. I'll have to see what I can build up again starting in June, I suppose. My cycling form is not in such a dire state, but after that lovely ride that was the subject of my last post, every single weekend has been disgusting, weather-wise, so I haven't had a chance to repeat it.
I still want to target an August triathlon, and I'll be able to scale back the running after I return from Leiden. I just hope the workaholic brain actually allows me to get to the pool and on the bicycle often enough.
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