Rest and improve

It seems that after 10 days off from running I have not lost fitness despite feeling like a large blob. Strangely a few friends have said that I look like I have lost weight, so I decided to weigh myself and see if they were right. Surprisingly I have actually lost 1.5 kg despite eating at least this amount of chocolate every other day. Sadly I expect this is more to do with some kind of muscle atrophy than any helpful fat loss. Not that I am concerned about losing weight. But it would be helpful for running a marathon if I weighed 80 kilos rather than 85.

I have been thinking about my first run back for a number of days now. Originally I thought I would start out with an easy ten kilometre trot just to help bring my lungs back into the game. However as the days went by and I did a cycle, a gym session and two yoga sessions I started to up the ante. Yesterday I was meant to do that easy ten km but instead I did yoga and thoroughly enjoyed not having to run! So with work out of the way this afternoon I fuelled myself to take on this week's speed session, not exactly "easing back in".

Essentially I have 8 weeks of training left until Melbourne marathon and feel like I've gone backwards with my training. So today was a real test to see how I was doing. The intervals were 6x400 metres with 90 seconds rest between each. After that there was a 2.5 minute recovery interval and then the same 6x400m again. The target time for each interval was 1:28 (just under 6 minute mile pace).

I had a nice little warm up jog down to Centennial Park which left me with a double stitch, great start! Once into the park I set off like a dog after a squirrel and knew I was back. The first interval came in at 1:25, nice! Once I had seen that on the watch I knew that I'd be able to do the lot as I wasn't pushing to the max or feeling like my lungs might explode (as with Monday's cycle!) I won't bore you with all the details, but after that I ran at least 1:28 for the other 400s if not quicker and finished with a smile and a swagger as I cruised back home.

Tomorrow I'm going to do a shortened version of this week's tempo run before I run 18 miles on Saturday after my shift at Apple. I definitely feel that being ill has given me back my motivation to train and focused my mind on what I need to do over the next 8 weeks. If I was to give any advice I would tell you to rest up and ease off when you are sick. There's a reason you are ill and by kicking back you will surprise yourself when you get back to full training. Besides as a runner there are always other areas to focus on, like core training, flexibility and strength work, which are forever being left out.

Until the weekend,

Happy training!

T :)