Rule 5

This morning I was meant to run an early morning intervals session of 9*800m at 5k pace, with 400m jog in-between each set.  That’s a tough session.

Instead I got up, played with my puppy and ate a grapefruit.

I say that so off-hand, but actually making the choice not to do the workout was a tough one.  

The internet is full of memes, slogans, quotes etc like the one above, but I don’t think they are necessary.  Most competing athletes tend to do too much, I think, rather than too little.

It’s hard to know when to rest, especially when your training plan is hammering away.  I had a pretty killer track session on Wed night, which ended up being nearly 15km of speed work.  Thursday morning early I got up and ran my 70 min easy, or as I logged it – “dead man’s shuffle.”  While easy runs are supposed to be at an easy pace, I’ve run ultra marathons faster than I ran yesterday morning.

I should have taken yesterday off so I could have done a quality intervals session today.  But it is what it is, and tomorrow I have 20 miles to run and I am deeply weary and to put it simply, my butt is killing me from the 200m sprints we did at the track.  So I took a big breath and put my trainers back into the closet.  For today.

I’ll be back tomorrow.

Weekly Update – last week

Last week was a decent training week.  I got in two tempo runs, a track session, and a long run.

And some horse riding, as I mentioned last week!  I’ve had some questions on the riding, so if you’re interested:

• My heart rate for a tempo run is usually around 175 bpm (beats per minute);
• my heart rate for an easy run is around 130-145;
• my heart rate while riding was around 100 when trotting and 120-145 while cantering.

This shows that riding – at least for me – is a good fat burning sport, but it really doesn’t burn a whole lot of calories compared to running or cycling.  Good for core strength, though!

February totals:  56 hours

Swim:  5 km / 2 hours 18 min

Bike:  323 km  / 11 hours 28 min

Run: 267 km / 24 hours 32 min

I’m always amazed at how marathon training (versus Ironman training) takes much less time overall, and yet I feel more tired… !

This is an update to my recent post on fast = sexy when it comes to male cyclists (scientific fact, apparently!).

My friend Daniel (who is also a very fast cyclist), pictured below zooming along at top speed, has suggested a sexy cyclist:

Daniel Russell = fast

No, he wasn’t nominating himself (we will wait for his wife to forward that suggestion), but MARIO CIPOLLINI as a sexy cyclist, going against the grain of my words that male cyclists aren’t identified as sexy.

This news flash is warranted mostly because when I googled Mario, like Victoria Pendleton‘s photo in my last post… this came up:

Mario Cipollini

At a time when @FiftyWomenToKona is rallying for support for women in triathlon, I say hurrah for a very small expression of gender equality!