Over 60s training.

Beautiful day here. Warm and sunny. Sat down in the garden while I decided what to do next and woke up nearly an hour later.

Ran just over 4 carp miles off road with the doodle. She didn't enjoy it either.

Ceal
A post! Sorry you're still crocked.
Is the garden benefitting from your injury?

Mick
Pace and HR was a bit up and down. That's not too usual for you.
JJ

Tracey
What's a short thigh? Sounds interesting.

Nice to see you Ceal - sounds like you are enjoying your family.

JJ - good to see you out there. 

Mick - that was a tough workout!

I ran 9 km on the flat - first 20 minutes with Ironman mate. She told me she has finished 44 Ironman events! She is a legend!

Then son shouted husband and I out for lunch for our 43rd wedding anniversary. It is really tomorrow, but husband will be working out of Auckland tomrrow, so we celebrated it today.

good morning

Mick6
0.25 mile pick ups are hard work - good going in less than ideal conditions. Your maxHR did not get way out of line either which is good news.

Tracey
you made the most of the warm weather down Sarrrrth !!

JJ
if you had done that here you would have awoken frostbitten!!

NZC
Congratulations - good going !!
I bought my wife a coffee mug a few years ago which appealed to my sense of humour.
It had on it in two cartoon pictures of a woman saying in one "If only I knew when I said for ever..." and in the second, with a sad face ".......it would last this long!!"
It went down well

Ceal
full works eh - can't wait!!

The pleasant afternoon sun rapidly disappeared as the fog returned and it was damp cold by the time of the run at 7:00pm. As I predicted/feared the steep sides of the Nidd Gorge  featured strongly with several ascents and descents along with an extremely circuituous route around the town soended up doing 7.68 miles of pretty tough fartlek type running. This included at one stage catching up and then overtaking all of the local running club out on a hill session -they were quite surprised as I went past them.
pub afterwards did excellent rump steak, chips and trimmings for an amazing £6.00 per head. Excellent local meat and a new beer to try - made the run well worthwhile - and I was hungry

Welcome back Ceal! You've been missed. Next time you're cooking one of those meals, let me know...

Happy anniversary, NZC.

John B. - "like body heat to a bedbug" - gruesome simile, but made me laugh.

Mick / Tracey - ordinary salt wouldn't help with lack of potassium, surely? (Aren't bananas supposed to contain potassium?)

JJ - those poor lambs, born in January - they must feel like turning round and crawling back into Mum.

Yesterday was spring, but today is not. I was in Hereford yesterday, which made it even springier, as Hereford is always a good three weeks ahead of home. There were daffodils in flower, and blossom on some trees, which certainly isn't the case here. Got home in time for 4.88 miles with the running club.

Ceal - yes, it was the lady you met in Italy - she is still going strong.

Hope you enjoyed your pampering at the hairdresser. Meant to say congrats on your LFOM award - fantastic age-grading! 

Torque Steer - my son says, "you've been married 43 years and I've done 33 of them!" So it's good to think he'd still shout us out for  lunch

You seem to be getting stronger by the day. Good work.

TS,
I find that when I run in group runs like that I tend to put in a much greater effort than I would have done if I had run it on my own so I know that what you mean by "pretty tough fartlek running". It always feel good to pass those youngsters but I am finding that it seems to be happening at little less often.

ceal,
Thanks for the comments and yes it is going very well, I can feel myself getting stronger and stronger. I have lost a lot of speed while recovering from my achilles which as you know took a long long time.
I have lots of races that I can run this summer but not sure how many I will do but my buddy runners are very keen to do a couple per month so we will see.

Here is my RunLog chart showing all the races currently on my list.

 My software searches through the last one year of my log and finds the best AG and uses that to predict my times for the various distances. I have entered my target times as well based on how I feel my training is going so you can see I have some work to do.
I have only committed to the first two on the list so far but I shouldn't have any trouble getting in on the rest if I want to.

Columba,
Bananas are good for potassium but the issue is not what I eat but how long it takes me to get what I need from the food I eat. That is why it is so important to take it in liquid form immediately after your workout. 

A recovery run today, 4 miles easy pace. I have another pickup session tomorrow. 

Mick, my attitude to races is, why not do quite a few of them as who knows how long we'll be able to competitively at our time of life? I enjoy races, it's what I train for, and probably do too many of them for optimum performance but I think, for me, it's worthwhile.

ceal, nice to see you back posting.

I did another track session this morning and was quite pleased. Same format as the previous two weeks as I'd like to judge progress like-for-like. So 5 x 400m with 60 secs rest, then 5 minutes complete rest/light jogging, followed by another 5 x 400m with 60 secs rest. I definitely felt stronger today with the second set.

Times: 1.29, 1.27, 1.28, 1.28, 1.27;  1.33, 1.32, 1.33, 1.32, 1.30

Daughter and grandaughter dropped in today for a couple of hours.

NZC
Happy anniversary.

Graham
You certainly know how to run 400m reps. Great session.

Ceal
The doodle is not as old as me but we've grown very attached to each other.
If you're having a long hairdressing session hide the bank statements.
JJ

Good morning

5.09M; 1:08:21.3; 13:25/M; 6°C and damp.

Not good.

Ceal - I thought gardening weather is when it rains when you've just decided the lawn is at last dry enough to mow.

al

good morning

Mick6
I hope those race distances are in K's not miles !!
I didn't run much of Tuesday's effort in company!!
Because of the joys of looking for a trail, going off in the wrong direction, catching back up and then the ultimate pleasure, the ubiquitous back arrow, where one has finally got on the right trail and is blasting along miles in front to find one of those which signifies running all the way back to the last person and then turing around and doing it all again!!
One such had me running over 0.6 miles extra all on my own!!

Graham
excellent session - it's not so much the improvement in times but the feeling of greater control  over the latter part of the session that signifies that benefirts are being obtained - it still remains tough!!!

Columba
Hereford sounded very springy 
The crocus are reluctantly crawling out of the mud in  town here.
Good to see the running club keeping you on the streets 

aws
you should have left the lawnmower at home 

NZC
I hope you carbo loaded well!!

I would like to think I wsa getting stronger but even after a planned rest day there was nothing much in the legs this morning although another 10 litres of emulsion paint applied to walls and ceilings yesterday may have had a further draining effect on top of Tuesday's run 

Anyway 5.6 miles done in 51:20 (9:13m/m) with rubbish HR readings

1m 9:09
2m 9:23
3m 9:03
4m 8:58
5m 9:22
.6m 5:24

Quite the slowest I have run since returnng and shows that there is still not much strength in depth  

TS - Now why didn't I think of that?

al

Graham,
Very solid 400s, well done.

TS,
If you took a day off I would have expected you to have recovered, must be all the DIY. You have got to give that up.

Windy here today so it made my pickups tough. I did the same workout as Tuesday and on the same course. Inspired by Graham I got a slight improvement in overall pace but at a cost.

09:29 AM Thursday, March 07, 2013

Gym12k, 0c, cloud, windy, 6 x 400 pickups, struggled with the wind.

Run Duration = 69:56,  Run Length = 12.0 Kms or 7.5 Miles

Average Run Pace = 05:50 per Km or 09:23 per Mile, Age grade =  61.5 %

Average Run WHR = 70.1 %,  Max Run WHR = 88.8 %

Average Run Cadence = 85.1, Average stride length = 1.0 m

Selected Lap Data

Lap  Duration   Kms      Miles    Per Km    Per Mile    AWHR     MWHR   Cadence   Slength

 06     01:39     0.40     0.25      04:08       06:39       80.4%      85.3%       92.0        1.31

 08     01:39     0.39     0.24      04:12       06:46       77.6%      87.4%       94.0        1.26

 10     01:37     0.39     0.24      04:06       06:37       74.8%      86.7%       93.0        1.31

 12     01:42     0.39     0.24      04:21       07:01       76.9%      88.1%       96.0        1.19

 16     01:34     0.37     0.23      04:16       06:52       82.5%      88.8%       94.0        1.24

 19     01:49     0.42     0.26      04:23       07:04       85.3%      88.8%       94.0        1.21

Selected Lap Summary

 06     10:02     2.4       1.5       04:15       06:50       79.6%      87.5%       93.8        1.25

Overnight rain meant some trails got muddy again !

Ran different route again with multi-terrain of grass, mud, undulations as well as hills before joining more solid ground round main lake. First time in yonks in doing any hilling. First two miles slowed me down to 16 min miles in parts where it was really hard going.

Gloomy afternoon but a gorgeous looking blonde with black micra was a ray of sunshine as she waved and smiled passing the other way.  She always has a cheery greeting, we passed times before too. Then you get the opposites...those runners who can't be bothered, but I guess we all experience that.  It does take allsorts .

Mile times...13.54,  11.51,  10.54,  10.40,  9.55,  plus a slow warmdown for 0.6 m @ 12.20 pace.  total covered 5.6 miles.    Aerobic work feeling a bit more comfortable now.

Tracey - I feel the same about my long run on Sunday!

Ispent a long time in the garden yesterday as the family were going to go orienteering around the local park in the evening. I had volunteered to take the 3 year old on the shortest course.

Annie wasn't interested, so we only did a few controls then found the playground and waited for the others to finish. Bought pizza and had a nice family evening.

I still feel stuffed this morning, so I can well done Torque Steer for getting out as well as doing the painting! I feel I can only do one big effort.

Don't know why this lettering is so small.

That last sentence doesn't make any sense at all as it has posted just the same as usual!

This made me grin the other day......

Paddy's racing snail is not winning races anymore.
So he decided to take it's shell off to reduce it's weight
and make him more aerodynamic.

It didn't work, if anything it made him more sluggish.