Training Log Archive: Kat

About 10 minutes warm-up, 5:30 cool-down.

EVENT: District event at Chobham Common
COURSE: Brown, 8.06 km, 130 meters climb, 24 controls
TERRAIN: The course went entirely through heather and knee-high tall yellow grass. Very rough footing, lots of muddy/marshy areas, and lots of gorse. This was one of the most physical courses I've ever done and definitely one of the crappiest maps I've ever run on!
MY RUN: Did alright and kept within sight of Per Forsberg for the middle chunk of the course, but then was really knackered by the end. My legs and arms hurt from constant contact with prickly vegetation and the bottom of my right foot was killing me because of all the uneven ground. I was getting really tired and frustrated by the end, but still managed to have a decent result. I think I had about 10 minutes of mistakes/hesitation/bad-route-choice, but these were mostly due to not being able to find the bingo controls in the heather and having trouble at times relating this old map to the present-day terrain. (The vegetation has changed considerably since the 2004 survey.) Overall good effort.
RESULTS: 10th out of about 70, mostly men.
Results at http://www.go-pages.fsnet.co.uk/results.htm

C • Knackered ... yes, you have be... 7

Brown - Splits

About 10 minutes warm-up before the race, the rest after. Felt sluggish beforehand and had various pre-race problems: (1) couldn't find my team members (2) didn't know how to put spikes on shoes properly (3) when I did find my team, it turned out they didn't have my number, so with ten minutes left to the start, I had to go to registration to get it. It's lucky for me that I like rushed starts! :)

The Birmingham Cross Country Challenge at Senneleys Park. The course was 6km, entirely on hilly grassy fields with several small bridge crossings (covered with sand) and one actual river crossing. Since all of the various junior categories had run their races before the main women's race, it was pretty muddy by the time we started. I had an excellent run. I tried to keep up the pace on the uphills and cruised on the downhills. I beat Christine by over a minute, was only about 30 seconds behind Sarah, and managed to out-kick a girl in the last 200 meters. I feel awesome.

C • Spikes for XC 3

A short swim, because it's Friday!
warm-up: 4x100 free easy on 2 minutes
main:
4x200 free on 3:30
100 free easy
2x50 fly/back on 65
100 free easy
2x{50 sprint on 60, 50 back on 70}
(I did these with Wiley. First one was 35, and I beat him by a body length. Then he went significantly faster on the second one and although I pushed hard, I just barely out-touched him. Too bad I didn't look at my watch on that one. It was fast.)
cool-down: 3x100 free easy on 2 minutes
TOTAL: 2,000 meters

5 minutes erging to warm-up, then quadricep and hamstring strengthening exercises. Average for the erg was 2:25.4. I'm still convinced I'm doing something wrong there, wish someone could show me the proper way to do it!

Club Run. This was one of the most relaxing runs I've ever been on. I feel so much better now!

I felt really sluggish for the first half of the swim because it was right after doing strength exercises at the gym. Then, after the 500, I felt much smoother.
warm-up: 4x100 free easy on 2 minutes
main:
12x50 free on 60 sec
100 back easy
500 free (7+ minutes)
3x{50 kick on 65 sec, 50 free on 60 sec}
(Felt good doing these. Got 13+ sec rest on the 50s free.)
100 back easy
3x{50 sprint free on 60 sec, 50 back easy on 75 sec}
(Times were approximately 40, 38, 38.)
4x50 fly/back on 65 sec
cool-down: 3x100 free/back easy
TOTAL: 2,800 meters

A long run with Wylie, the Australian guy I've been chatting to during my swimming sessions. We went the usual way around Christ Church Meadow, up the river, across Port Meadow, either 2.5 or 3.5 loops around the Nature Reserve (I actually took a split on the second loop - it was 13:23), then across Port Meadow, a bit on the pavement till we crossed the river, then down to the bottom of Port Meadow along the other side of the river, then back home. He had a GPS gadget with him, but it didn't look like the newest model and I think it was a bit off with its estimates. I agreed with it that we went about 7:30 min/mile for the first two miles or so, but then it claimed we were going 8:15 or even 8:30 per mile when doing the Nature Reserve loop and I think that can't possibly be true. I do not have the best sense of pace, but I do know that the effort was somewhere between easy and tempo pace. Honestly, it felt closer to 7:40 min/mile pace. Maybe because the GPS gadget updates every few seconds it doesn't realize that in that time the path has dipped and turned, so we end up running more than it thinks. Anyway, I feel that we were definitely running pretty quickly for the first 1.5 hours and only the last half hour or so felt somewhat "easy." Wylie is not that much faster than I am, but I definitely felt he was controlling the pace, even though usually we were side by side or I was a bit in front. Since I'm not doing intervals this week, though, I thought running a bit faster than normal would be ok today.

C • ice baths 2

I've just finished reading Paula Radcliffe's book and was intrigued by some of the things she mentioned, such as taking an ice bath after hard runs. I don't have access to big bags of ice, so I can't quite pull this off, but I did try turning on the cold water, plugging the drain, and sitting in the bath for ten minutes, immersed up to the waist. Not that bad, actually, except that my toes went numb.

C • book 3

Today I did the workout that I had planned to do last Friday. (I started doing it on Friday, but felt sluggish and tired, perhaps from doing a bit of weight-lifting on Thursday, so I did something shorter and easier instead.) I don't think this workout was tougher physically than some of the other ones I've done, but it was definitely tougher mentally.
warm-up:
4x100 free on 2 min (20+ sec rest each time)
2x50 free on 60 sec (point of this was to get moving and remember what going fast feels like)
main set:
2x{5x100 free on 1:45, 2x200 free on 3:30}
(~10 sec rest for the 100s and 15+ sec rest for the 200s)
6x50 fly/back on 60 sec (felt pretty relaxed)
cool-down: 3x100 free easy
TOTAL: 3,000 meters