Road to London

Mondays are very boring, sorry.

Went to the gym, did some exercise and listened to some music.

Oh I also ate a Toblerone, one of the massive 2000 calorie ones, it was bloody great.

Split miles session on the track, i like this one.  1200m at 10k pace, 200m jog through and then 400m at 5k pace.

It was cold, damn cold tonight.  Did a tester lap of the track whilst the group were running a warm up and track was starting to ice up a bit so being the thoughful, caring and considerate fellas that we are we decided to tweak the session a bit.

New plan was to drop the 10k pace by 1 second per 100 and run the 400m effort at 10k pace instead of 5k.  Now the thing with plans is that people need to stick to them for them to work and sticking a group of people on the track means plans dont get stuck to.

First 1200, spot on.

First 400 too fast.

And from then on it was a standard session of everyone going too fast and nobody wanting to back down, my favourite type of session. 

We decided to drop the 4th rep as it was getting a little too slippy much to everyones delight.  I say everyone but turns out we forget to tell Simon G's group who started their final rep when we had all finished, I would apologise but it made me laugh so my apology would be a damn lie.

Sorry D team.

Easy miles day.

The sun was shining and for the first time in ages I went out in shorts.

At the moment I am listening to a lot of hip hop, as you know my musical tastes always goes through phases.  There was the very long Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine phase, the Young Fathers phase and very often a Stevie Wonder phase.

Now it's all about The Pharcyde and a lot of De La Soul thrown in for good measure.  So, Wednesday was an easy sunny run up the coast with some head nodding to Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde and my particular favourite 'Ya Mama'

If you dont know this song you should put it on right now, it has some of the finest lyrics, a personal favourite being "Your mama's glasses are so thick she look into a map and see people waving back at her"

Now I've mentioned Carter and I'm thinking I need to listen to Sheriff Fatman.

Threshold Thursday.

If you remember last week I had a horrible threshold session and finished by saying - Grim, grim, grim.  Next week I'm doing it again but starting with a 2 mile rep instead of 1 mile. Can't wait.

Today was that day.  The planned session was 3 x 3 miles and finish off with 1 x 2 miles and all at threshold pace with 4 minute recoveries between each one.  

It's cold, it's windy, there are lots of people about, I hate extendable dog leads.  Last week I did this session on the parkrun course and then spent ages complaining about how horrible it was and what a stupid idea it was to do it there.  A good coach will always learn from their mistakes and only an idiot would make the same mistake twice.

This week I did it on the parkrun course, I'm an idiot.

Aiming for each 3 miles rep to be between 21:30 and 22:30, first one was bloody awful and I nearly got wiped out by a sausage dog, spotted his extendable lead at the last minute and hurdled it whilst making a weird high pitched squealing noise.  Me, not the dog.

That bloody dog then walked up and down the prom for pretty much the entire duration of my session and gave me a look every time like he was going to mess me up, I'm pretty certain I saw him laughing at me at one point.

First rep 22:14, then 22:07 and then 22:10.  Just the 2 mile rep to go now which needed to be between 14:20 and 15:00, did it in 14:36.

Jogged past the sausage dog one final time, he's now my lifelong enemy.

He better not be there next week.

Friday easy miles with De La Soul.

Yesterday's session absolutely destroyed me.

Decided to cut this one short and go to the shop for a coffee.  

Saturday is always threshold pace parkrun, I'll rephrase that.

Saturday is supposed to be threshold pace parkrun.

Saturday is never threshold pace parkrun.

Standing chatting to Ben (its not a blog if Ben's not in it) at the start when the rain starts and then we're off.

It's raining heavily and one of the things that happens when it rains is you get puddles.  What the hell is it with people not wanting to run through puddles ? We start running and almost immediately everyone stops as people try and navigate around the puddles, as usual I start swearing and muttering my disgust with the puddle dodgers.  I then make a point of running through every puddle and splashing everyone around me because that's the kind of child I am. 

Tonight we have a group night out in Whitley Bay, tomorrow I'm supposed to be running 22 miles.

There is not a chance in hell that I'll be running 22 miles tomorrow, there's a very high chance I'll spend all day tomorrow on the settee drinking coke and eating crisps.

Last night was superb.

I got very drunk.

Murphy woke me up at 7am.

I lay for a long time on the settee watching Tales of the Unexpected.

Couldn't even bring myself to stand up long enough to make a coffee.

People started cyber bullying me to go for a run, my head hurts, my head feels like it weighs 14 stone, I'm pretty certain I'll vomit if I try and run.

I go for a run, it's Mark S's fault.  He said going out was the hardest part, he lied, that was the easiest part.  The running bit was the hard part.

Half a mile in and I decide this is a bad idea and I should go home, I see Rebecca and a few others running toward me at the point I'm thinking about being sick into a bin, I push on.

At 2 miles I decided I'll run to Tynemouth and back.

At 3 miles I feel okay and think I'll do 9 or 10 miles.

At 4 miles I feel great and decide to do a half marathon.

At 7 miles I feel awful and decide to turn around and run home.

10 hungover miles done, my head weighs the same as a small elephant now.

I've been laughed at and heckled by Johnny, Vaughan and countless others, never catch me doing that.

Co-op is calling my name.  You know whats coming next.

No chocolate croissants.  I'm hungover and genuinely think I might cry.

I buy a chocolate twist and a Mars Bar instead.  

My god, these are superb!

I'm now a chocolate twist convert.  the pastry to chocolate ratio is way better than a croissant, alongside the chocolate they also put custard in them, that's a bonus I was not expecting.  

Home, shower and a bit of a lie down.  Next week will be my 22 miler.

All previous blogs are available to read HERE