Road to London

Rest day Monday became easy run day Monday as I can't go for a run on Wednesday for reasons you'll read later on.

Gym with Graham in the morning, kettlebell and some bodyweight exercises and then out in the glorious sunshine and freezing cold for 4 mile's easy along the coast.  Stuck on some 1991 indie classics and had a nice run to loosen off the legs.

1991 was a good year for me,start of my A levels and was my year for music, it was when I really started to find my way with music I liked and not my Dad's or brothers choices. I was 16 and working on the salad bar at Morrison's so for the first time ever I had a bit of cash and I mean a 'bit' as I only got paid £2.12 an hour. It was a horrible job and had to start work at 7am on a Saturday morning. I also once had a lady complain to me that the potato salad she bought the previous week was 'a bit hard' and she couldn't eat it, I shrugged my shoulders and said I'd let someone know and couldn't really understand why she thought I actually cared.

Anyway, it turned out I had been making potato salad with raw potatoes.

Nobody told me they had to be cooked.

Never liked potato salad.

I do like chips, chips are good.

Tuesday I couldn't make club as had family travelling up so did my session during the day.

Thursday threshold now became Tuesday threshold and session was 3 x 15 mins with 5 min jog recoveries between each one. I'm starting to really enjoy these threshold sessions, they're getting longer and more reps and finding the pace much easier to hit.  

Session done with no problem, next week its 4 X 15 mins and then building upto 2 X 5km, 3 X 5km and finally 4 X 5km all at threshold.

Anyway, home to do some massaging and injury rehab work with clients and then Tuesday night with my big brother having a few glasses of red which quickly became a bottle of red wine each whilst watching Taskmaster.  

I have a funny feeling this week will include a lot of booze consumption.

Today was my brother's funeral.

A very weird day.

The day seemed to last forever.

I drank a lot of red wine.

Thursday and I wanted a bit of normality today so planned to go to club to do rolling 7's which is a session I love.

Out for breakfast in the morning with the extended family and polished off a ridiculously big cooked breakfast in Fox and Finch, spent the rest of the day feeling quite sick.  I reckon there was at least a full block of halloumi on my plate.

I bloody love halloumi.

I bloody love cheese, all cheese.

Session was efforts of 1min, 6min, 2min, 5min, 5min, 2min, 6min and 1min all with 2 min rolling recoveries between them.  It was seriously hard  right from the first one and you know it's a hard session when you end up in Tynemouth with the second half still to come.  As with last week's session it was B team carnage and people dropping out all over the place, came in at the end with Paddy, Ben, Steve and Matt.  

I blame Natasha for setting the pace on the way out and destroying us, she of course is Natasha 'half a session' Harvey and went home when we still had 14 minutes of intervals to go.

It's a hard session at the best of times but with 3 bottles of red wine over the past 2 days and a big cooked breakfast it was way harder than it should have been.

Got home, had a shower and had some cheese.

If you remember, I bloody love cheese.

I bloody love all cheese.

Cheese on toast is particularly good.

As is just eating big lumps of cheese.

Friday is easy miles and today was 5 miles easy with a few hill sprints.

Head out along the coast to Cullercoats, loop round the fountain and head back and do 10 X 8 second hill sprints on one of the ramps and then back home easy to work.

Plan slightly changed when I woke up to 60mph winds, but you know what, I'm a committed runner and I got out there and did what had to be done.

It wàs bloody awful.

Then onto a busy day trying to catch up on the 2 days I've taken off this week.

Downside of working for myself is no paid time off.

Upside of working for myself is no insane boss that you have to tiptoe round all the time.

Being self employed has way more upsides than downsides.

Plus my boss is much nicer.

Parkrun tomorrow at threshold and then long run on Sunday.

Think I might have some more cheese.

Parkrun, was a bit windy.

Went through first mile in 7:10 which was okay, eased off a bit during 2nd mile and then Harris caught up with me and we ran the rest of it together and had a nice chat and a catch up.

Probably should have pushed a bit harder today as didn't drink last night and not many of the fasties were there do could have finished high up the field but plan said threshold and I don't want to annoy my coach, he's a nightmare if you don't do what he says.

Tomorrow is 18 miles at 8:10-8:20 mile pace, weirdly looking forward to it.  

No booze tonight, have breakfast in the morning, take some gels and get it right.

Woke up, had bagel and honey and a cup of coffee.

Headed out the door with a couple of gels and a very rough idea of the route I was doing.

So, a little more explanation on how I 'plan' my routes as last week I was told I was insane not knowing exactly where I'm going but there is method in this madness (of sorts).

I have a route that's roughly 12-13 miles, out the door, up Monkseaton Drive, toward Earsdon, new road past Shiremoor, toward Village Hotel, onto Coast Road, down to Tynemouth Pool, into Shields, up past Knott's Flats, into Tynemouth and home along the coast.

I don't like knowing how far I've run and I really don't like knowing how far I've got left to run, so I do my route and I add loops in to make it longer if I need to and the first time I will check my distance is when my watch beeps after I've passed the clock at Tynemouth Priory.  This could be 10 seconds after I've passed or like today it could be 1590m after I've passed, then and only then do I know if I can finish at co-op and buy a croissant or if I have to run all the way home and have no croissant.

So today I ran to Cullercoats to add an early loop and then back past home and onto the usual route, added a couple of other little loops through Shiremoor and the business park and had a couple of gels and felt good.

Ran into a thorn bush on North Shields, it hurt and ripped my glove, I've changed my 'toblerone eaten' to 'things ran into' at the suggestion of Colin B as it makes for more interesting reading and I run into things way more than I eat toblerone.

Headed into Tynemouth and my watch beeped about 5m before the clock, damn it! 

This meant I had to run near enough a full mile before I could check the distance.  15 miles and I hadn't added enough loops, 16 miles and I'd be bang on 18 miles at co-op and it's croissant time and 17 miles and I'd have to run 19 to get a croissant.

It beeped, it was 16 miles.

Bloody marvellous.

A little loop round Spanish City and 18 miles done at 8 min miles pace.

Croissant time.

They had no croissants.

I nearly cried.

Actually I think I did have a little cry.

Went home. 

Had some cheese.

All previous blogs are available to read HERE