| You know how some days, you've slept well, trained right, rested, carb-loaded, tapered, foam rolled your bum half off, compressed, gorged on protein shakes, rested more and still manage to have a rubbish run? Today was NOT THAT DAY! By all accounts I should have died on my arse. With the miserable failure of Operation Early Night, the treadmill speed interval session before work this morning on only 4.5 hours sleep and day 13 (I started early) of consecutive running should, in theory, have either killed, injured or at least significantly hurt me. Nope. I banged out them 2 minute 10mph reps like a slickly oiled sequence of pistons. In fact one of them was 3 minutes because I forgot to pay attention and didn't notice how long I'd been going for. What's that about then? Must've been the Bluebarb Notcheese Cake! Yay for Cake! | The cheesy 80's soundtrack might have had something to do with it as well so I prescribe lots of (vegan) cake and some Tiffany; soon you'll be Running Just as Fast as (you) Can too! |
The approach to the Etihad Stadium from the Ashton Canal Upon emerging victoriously from the basement (my gym is in a basement, it's great as you don't feel like you're in a fish bowl like I imagine I would in some of them I have walked past), I received a text from a new(ish) running friend confirming that she was indeed going to attend a track session tonight with the club of which she is a member; Salford Harriers and that she'd see me at 6.30. Ah. Had I known that I was going to a track session as a keen new potential club member I might not have hammered it quite so hard on my speed sessions. Oh well.
A new VO2 Max! I am soooo 'superior'! ;) After a gentle jog (very gentle; I had heavy legs by the time I got out of work!) down to the Etihad Stadium and the Athletics Centre on site where the club meet, I was welcomed warmly to the group, which split into a few groups of different level runners. I joined the slowest track group and participated in a session in which we did 10 laps of the track, with a short recovery walk in between. Though I didn't feel I was performing at my strongest I really enjoyed it and was very pleased that I was able to join in at all, having started the day with such a hard session. I was pretty excited to hand in my application form and membership subscription there and then too and hope to receive my UKA number soon! I even got a new higher VO2 max reading from the session, it must be improving my performance already!
Funnily enough, I didn't feel too lazy for accepting a lift back into town tonight, and by the time I got to it, dinner didn't touch the sides! Blimey, such an eventful day, I hope I'm not totally dead tomorrow. Guess who's wearing knee-high compression socks to bed tonight despite the humidity! You're only as good as the workout you recover from after all!
