Two runs to discuss with you, slavering adoring fans!

Last night I did a 30 minute run to break the back of the fat laziness that kept me from exercising all weekend. 

Friday morning, I did a great session (770 calories) because I knew that a rich dinner and red wine was in my evening. Me and Buzz: "We can't wait to exercise tomorrow! We're addicted to it! We feel great!". 

Saturday, we intended to go but to be fair had a very heavy day including a long drive, a nap and a concert (the nap was in preparation for the the concert, ok? It wasn't just an scheduled nanna nap). I was also convinced by the argument that my calves and knees felt a little tender so a day off would be a responsible kinda thing. Me and Buzz: "We've had a busy day! We're a bit hungover so we'd have a much better session tomorrow, yeeeha!". 

So Sunday would be cool bananas. We decided to go in the arvo so that we could have a good breakfast out (it wasn't). I was so grumbly and eeeeerrrrrrrrunk after the disappointing breakfast (say the sound out loud. You'll recognise it) that I ended up sooking all afternoon. Me and Buzz: "Do you want a 3pm beer? Shall we get a bag of chips?".*

* to our credit, the bag still isn't finished and won't be even tonight. In the past it wouldn't have lasted 20 minutes.

So Monday morning. Two days off ain't so bad. At 4:10am the puppy was telling me that he had a tummy ache and needed to go outside to eat grass. The 6am wake up just did not happen. 

So by Monday night, I'd spent all day bitching at myself and feeling less and less sparky.  My dad changed our Tuesday morning gym date to Wednesday, so I had even more reason to fear that Monday night wouldn't happen. I realised I just had to go to work out the irks and kick my own arse. 

I went for 30 minutes, despite having planned to do a 40 minute long run over the weekend, just to cut myself some Monday slack. I also hate the gym after work - it's so busy you can't barely get a tready and everyone is loud and bouncy. I much prefer mornings when everyone is a bit more chillaxed and cruisy (in a very 7am hardcore kinda way). 

What I did decide to push myself on though was incline.I f you've taken my absolute silence to date as an indication that I set the tready to 0%, you'd be right. But seeing some road runs and maybe even the Mothers' Day Classic in the next few months, I wanted to give it a shot. 

I decided to keep my pace steady at 7.5km/hr, knowing that I 've found the last two 20 minutes at 8 km/hr pace tough at the end. I only want to tackle one challenge at a time!

This is what I did:

Minutes          Incline

0-10                   1%

10-15                 0%

15-20                 1%

20-30                 0%

Max HR 182bpm, average 169bpm. Average speed was 7.5 cos that's all I had it on. Average incline turned out to be 0.4%. That sounds so sad and lame.

Not much, I know. But I had no idea how I'd feel so I'm happy I kept it low-key. The first ten minutes felt great - I felt all springy and full of energy, like I was a machine just working properly. I didn't do a warmup first because of the tooth-and-nail fights for treadmills around 6pm, so I began from a cold start. I had a nice pace and a good tight feel to the run.

Although I didn't notice the incline when it was on, I did when I turned it down. And it did make it noticeably easier. 

Afterwards I did a hard 15 minutes on the swingy elliptical, so I still had gas in the tank.

This morning my legs were sore and heavy. My knees felt like they'd worked hard, something I've been noticing lately. My hip however was hip hip hooray. 

I did my fartlek (after a fashion) because I felt too leg-tired for a longer run. Here's what I did (my concession was a fast walk instead of a slow jog in the rest periods. Shut up):

Minutes       Speed (km/hr)

0-5                 7.5 (warm up)

90 secs           9

90 secs           6.5

90 secs           9

90 secs           6.5 

60 secs           10

60 secs           6

60 secs           10

60 secs           6 

30 secs           11

30 secs           6

30 secs           11

30 secs           6 

30 secs           12

30 secs           5.5

60 secs           12

60 secs           5.5

230 cals. Max HR: 189bpm. Av HR: 154bpm.

I found the 12km/hr really hard to sustain for 60 secs. Even though sometimes my HR goes up to around 190bpm on a slower run, it's more a slow escalation. This was a fast rise accompanied with hard breathing, which I don't usually get. 

I was pretty pleased with myself until I hopped on the elliptical and could see an athletic type girl doing her sprints - which started at 14km/hr and went up to 18km/hr. I reminded myself that a) she was only sprinting for less than 30 seconds at a time, and b) I must have had 30 kilos on her so if I strapped that to her back she'd stagger, fall, break a kneecap and then I'd be the best.

Yeah cop that! Now I can win!

Things I now need to look out for include: leg tiredness, sore knees, and homicidal tendencies against better (ie all) runners.