Week 7, day 1

[rmc28]

Sunday, I did a lot of walking.

Monday, I was tired and a bit achy from Sunday's walking, so I thought I'd take the day off running and run Tuesday instead.

Tuesday, my toddler was ill, so I worked from home and took care of them, and then it was really cold by the time my spouse came home and could take over, so I couldn't find the get up and go.

Wednesday: last possible day to run and still get in 3 runs this week.  But argh! lunchtime commitment! evening commitment!  I managed to carve out time for a run by running to get my older child from afterschool club, changing at work, and leaving my daybag with my spouse to bring home by bike.  This is one of the advantages of us working for the same organisation in the same building, but I don't really want to do it regularly (certainly not when it's cold in the evenings).

I was a bit too cold for my liking, and though I warmed up once running I never got really hot.  I coped a bit better with the solid running; I'd planned a slightly indirect version of my usual walk to afterschool club, with a couple of additional loops nearer the venue. I don't know if it was just because I was running towards a goal, but I felt less urge to stop and walk than I did on Saturday.

The worst bit is the busy road I need to cross near the end; I didn't want to wait at the crossing I normally use because I wasn't at all sure I'd be able to start running again if I stopped.  There are two sets of lights close together - the usual crossing and about 200m further on a junction with pedestrian cycle on the lights.  I ran past the crossing, looking for a gap in traffic; I wasn't thinking very clearly by then, being tired, but I thought "if I get to the junction and still can't cross, I'll turn around and run back until I find a gap and there can't be more than a couple of minutes left anyway".  And just then a gap appeared and I got across and about 90 seconds later the run was over, thank goodness.

So next run will be tomorrow lunchtime, and the third run will be Sunday late morning. 

Restarting is hard

[liv]

The Christmas break I managed to run twice in three weeks, which is not great, but the main reason is that the middle of Christmas was the wrong time to sort out ways to run when I'm in Cambridge and it's too cold outside. I was doing really a pretty decent amount of walking, at least a mile every day, walking into town and back most days, which is between 40 minutes and an hour each way depending on where in town, so I hoped I was maintaining my fitness at least somewhat. The first week back at work running just didn't happen; I hiked up a big hill on Sunday, and played a bit of Ingress (which is really good for making sure I'm not completely sedentary even when I don't have time to run), but other than that, having got out of the routine I couldn't make myself start again.

So today I dragged myself out, just barely. It was sleety and dark and horrible even just walking to the gym, which didn't help. I left it to the last possible minute to be able to leave the house and get a run in by a reasonable time in the evening, which is the last day I can run and get a second run (let alone a third) in within the week.

I wasn't feeling great, a bit coldy, but I told myself, if I keep saying I'm "sick" when it's this minor I'll never restart my regular running. That may have been a mistake, because in fact my lungs really weren't coping with running. I hope that's incipient cold and not that all my fitness has evaporated in the past month. So I did intervals of 5 minutes at 8 kph and 5 minutes walking, which on the one hand should be easy for me, but on the other was putting me pretty close to getting asthma, so I think that was a reasonable compromise between giving up too easily and pushing myself too hard. 3.5 km in 30 minutes.