The Week (or so) in Review

The first, best and most exciting news is that I now have real, legitimate followers. Not to discount all of my friends and family who have told me they are checking this out though. I truly appreciate everyone's support, regardless of the method, but it's a huge ego boost to see those little icons in the sidebar. It's nice to know the running community is so friendly and welcoming!

The other major event of the last week is that I started bootcamp. A friend and I were "encouraged" by another friend (you know who you are!) to join her on Monday nights at a local park for a weekly pseudo-Mum's Night Out. Little did I know that it is really a mild form of torture. I'm not sure why I expected to be eased into the class, but that's not the way it went. I will admit that it was a good workout. However, it massively kicked my butt. I could barely walk that night and it just went downhill from there. My husband, C, thought this was extremely funny and also derived great pleasure from poking me when I wasn't paying attention. He commented that he figured if he pushed me off of the bed I'd just roll around on the floor like a beetle on its' back. I would have thought this was mildly humorous if it hadn't hurt to laugh. Needless to say I missed my run on Tuesday.

I think I'll insert a little bit of a pity party here: My Wednesday (14th) stunk. I still couldn't move my legs and I had my first hill training session to contend with. There was no way I could get out of it. Thankfully it was only 3 x 400m repeats and C took our son, M's, buggy for 2 of those. The only thing I took away from that run (because, let's face it, it was kind of a garbage run for me) was that the pain in my legs receded. That was a nice surprise and a learning experience for later days.

The best day of the week had to be Thursday. Just for variety I decided it would be okay to throw a giant (for me) hill into the tempo run mix. Even with this obstacle, which I will admit I walked part of, I ran 5km in 31.20. Bootcamp must be doing something good for my legs and core! It's (I think) the fastest I've ever run that distance so I was pretty darned proud of myself. I was also happy that I finished my run before Pearl Jam finished their Backspacer album.*

Sunday saw me, C and M go out for a 10km long run. We do 10 and 1s - something else to come back to - and discovered that I should never push the buggy for the first half of a run. I'm slow for the first 20-30 minutes once I start and C expressed slightly veiled hatred for pushing for the end of the run. I guess we now know how our other long runs are going to go. We followed our run up with an 8km walk since it was a lovely, warm and sunny day.

The rest of the week has gone by fairly quickly. Bootcamp on Monday didn't cripple me quite as much (notice I said "as much" - it still hurt). I made C force me to run on Tuesday, but he was nice enough to take buggy duty for the whole 4km. Unfortunately I still struggled to keep tempo pace. The bonus was that I didn't wimp out and skip a scheduled run. Wednesday we were back to hills. I walked up the top half of the hill both times I had M, but, seeing as 33lb child + 25lb BOB = 58lbs to shove uphill, I won't feel guilty for that. I ran through the ones I did without him so that's good enough for me. I can't even feel bad about taking the shortcut home.

Today is a day off, and then back to running.

See you next week!




*At another time I might get into my love of running to 90s alternative rock - a total throwback to when I was in high school.