Weekend off

We were away househunting last weekend and I managed to leave my running shorts at home. Rather than run around Stevenage in my underpants to complete the 7 miles on my plan I decided just to have a weekend off. I've been pretty conscientious about following my plan lately and I am supposed to have a bit of a rest every 3 weeks, so I didn't feel too guilty about it.

In fact having compared my pace this summer to last summer, I'm averaging 30 seconds faster per mile in training, so I'm hoping that will translate to faster times than last autumn in the upcoming half marathons.


I was back out running on the Thames on Tuesday lunchtime where I ran to St Catherine's Dock and back at lunchtime, nearly 6 miles. A bit further than I planned to due to a bit of a miscalculation on the outward leg! And on Wednesday night I completed my eight 400 metre intervals around Dulwich after work. Wednesday night seems to be club runners night and there were quiet a few Dulwich runners doing laps of the park as the light faded.

UPDATED - Saturday 20th August

Yesterday I had a day off and the car was due in the garage for a repair so I postponed my usual Thursday run to Friday and ran back the 3.25 miles from the garage (a good example of how you can fit running into your day regardless of how busy you are - if you just think creatively and plan ahead a little).

Today I planned to do 5 laps of Greenwich for 10 miles. I managed four laps ok but running down the hill on the fifth lap I started to get cramp in my hamstring. I was feeling a little bloated and sluggish so I decided against trying to run up the hill a fifth time. However I still managed 9.5 miles, keeping me ahead of my training plan.

There was a British Heart Foundation charity run in progress in the park today so the paths were full of red T-shirted joggers and walkers. For many of them I'm sure it was their first run, and many of them probably think they're slow and unfit - but to their credit they were out in the park getting exercise and raising money, putting them well ahead of many others who spent their Saturday morning in bed or watching telly.

My Garmin Forerunner suffered a bit of a gremlin today - it wouldn't switch on at all, or recharge when plugged into the laptop at home. I figured I'd use my mobile phone lap timer but it managed to reset itself sometime during the first lap. So I don't know my time for today's run. But maybe it's a good thing to forget about the clock once in a while and just run.

(I discovered via t'interweb that a certain combination of button pressing resets the Garmin and it's now back in operation).

Plan for tomorrow: 4 miles around Dulwich at planned race pace (which means 8:50 miles).

My total for August now stands at 58 miles and for the year, almost 660 miles. Still on target.