It has been one of those weeks that started slowly, and got progressively more crazy as it went on…

Monday:
well…Monday was crazy…and scary…but not in a lots of exercise kind of way, in an I shouldn’t leave my run until 8pm this time of year sort of way…

I wanted to go for a run after work, I needed to go for a run after work, I remembered that I had a 10k looming (it is Sunday if you want to skip to the end…) and I needed to get some more runs under my belt.

It started out ok…

But due to my not learning from last weeks “it is scary to run at dusk” episode, and my forgetting that is it now september and starting to get dark earlier, I ended up running in the complete dark!

this is bad for a number of reasons…
1) I have seen too many episodes of NCIS/CSI etc where people get attacked on dark country paths…
b) even if I hadn’t the shadows on the deserted abandoned railway line surrounded by trees look very scary
3) there are many potholes/tree roots/loose rocks on this path just waiting to loom up out of the dark and attack me!

that and it was getting foggy and I had Zombies Run! playing in my headphones…

not too bad a run although being scared does not lend its self to calm measured breathing!

Tuesday:

Tuesday, unlike any other Tuesday, was PT day…

oh no hang on…I mean like every other Tuesday:-p

Regardless of the fact that PT day is (nearly) always Tuesday, it was still awesome 🙂 We did more kicking than we have been doing recently, and as we have the past couple of weeks we have moved the boxing up to the start of the session.

Following that we did more heavy lifting, squats, deadlifts, overhead squats and clean and presses. We also returned to the snatch after a few weeks away from it to let my shoulder recover 😀

Talking of shoulders, we had to do some shoulder strengthening / rotator cuff stuff, to try to keep it all fixed 😀  and talking of things that need fixing, we did some more hip mobility work…because although they are better than they were, my hips are still fairly stiff 😦

Wednesday:

on Wednesday I tried out my new brooks pure cadence running shoes…I thought ooh new lightweight minimal drop shoes…these will be awesome…also I have worn them once before and they were pretty good…

how wrong I was…they were little torture devices for feet that made my calves and arches hurt so much that It was like being back at the very start of my 365 c25k program!

I went about 3.5km (but the gps failed on me so I am not really sure…) and it was in as much running as I could intervals interspersed with hobbling!!

Luckily I made up for this with some dancing in the evening 🙂 about 1.5hrs of dancing as we had to have an AGM first 😀 it was the quickest AGM on record!

Thursday:

Thursday I wanted to make up for Wednesdays horrible running and get at least one more sensible run in before sundays 10k…

it had an advantage over monday in that I wasn’t terrified, and an advantage over wednesday in that I wasn’t in immense pain, but I still couldn’t actually get my legs going, they were fighting with me the whole way! still…it was better than nothing!

Friday:

Friday there was walking…
nice easy day, don’t wreck the legs before the run… I know I’ll walk…and walk …and walk for the whole day round and round and across and back across an even call busfest. This is basically a giant meet up / trade show for VW Camper vans

It involved walking 12.5k steps, and going approximately 10-12 km…

and getting up at 6am to do it!

not as much of a rest as I thought…

maybe Saturday will be better…

Saturday:

yes, saturday will definitely be a rest. I was helping my friend sally out at Maker Faire, which is a show/meet up of lots of people who make various different things in weird and wonderful ways. Sally is an amazing knitter both by hand and by machine, and her stand was a huge showcase of this and of her magic software hack which allows you to draw a picture, scan it in and then knit it on the machine…so pretty awesome stuff!

But I forgot just how much standing there was, I managed to walk 10k steps and basically not sit down from 9am to 6pm… awesome day, but not a rest at all!! I always forget that standing on hard floors is worse than walking!

I went home and sat in a bath full of muscle soak-y stuff, then plastered my legs in my new hot ginger muscle rub and hoped that some miracle would happen and they would recover!!

Sunday:
Sunday morning arrived and when I dragged myself out of bed at 6am (I always have to drag myself out of bed if it is before 7am…ok honestly if it is before 8am…which basically means I drag myself out of bed every day…none of this leaping up all full of life for me!)

I was pleasantly surprised by my legs, they were not overly achy, they felt a bit on the lead side but not as bad as I expected so that was a plus!! I replastered my legs in the seemingly magic muscle rub and followed it with my 2xu compression leggings and hoped that this would hod me together long enough to run!!

At the start of the race, after walking up and down for a bit to warm up I got chatting to another woman who was running her first race for about 5 years! this was unusual for me as I am normally antisocial and grumpy…it did help me get over the whole “what the hell am I doing here” feeling I always get at the start of races mind you!

once I started it was ok, the middle of the race was a bit iffy, and around 6km my toes went numb which I considered to be a bad sign…

this was not helped by kms 5 and 6 being on a field and some pebbly beach!! not the best running surfaces I have encountered to be honest!

after that, things improved as we were back onto the sea front 😀

I started the race with about 5/6 min intervals, and by the end I was down to about 3 min intervals, but I hadn’t set myself a plan, I was just attempting to run as much as I could to see what happened…

what happened was I knocked 9 mins off the time I ran the 10k in april!! 😀

9 mins!!

That is not just because it is a flat course! I guess the training is working even though I don’t actually feel like I have improved 😀

I crossed the finish line in 1hr 24mins and 7s according to the official chip time 🙂 which put me 976th out of 998 (not last woohoo) over all! I still got the sympathy claps, but nothing like as badly as last time, and to be honest I don’t care because I improved so much that I am over the moon with the result 😀 😀