22km Blue Lake and Plenty River

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised as this keeps happening this year, but again my race plans have fallen in a heap with the Tan Ultra changing dates. So now I'm going to train for the You Yangs Ultra but still tossing up between 50km or 50mi. I already entered the Sri Chinmoy 1/2 marathon tomorrow so today as the start of some real training I did 22km of trails.

I decided to explore some more of the trails in the Plenty Gorge Park. But since the Blue Lake area used to be a quarry, a lot of the trails are dead ends as they all used to be the roads the trucks would take. Came across a few other runners and a million or so kangaroos.





My achillies killed the whole time. I hate my achillies. I wore the Nike Frees, although I don't think that had any affect on it. Tomorrow I'll be wearing my Five Fingers in the half so I will need to watch my form, but it's a flat course so hopefully it wont hurt so much. I haven't run that far in the FFs since the Tan Ultra in August last year.

Excuses

As much as I enjoy all my running, sometimes laziness gets the better of me.

Friday night I had some time to kill in between work and going to the pub so I went to the gym for the first time in a month or so. I only ever work upper body because I don't like my legs to be too fatigued for running. So after my upper body was done, I still had some time so I hit the leg press machine with some descending sets and then did ascending sets of stiff legged deadlifts. No, I don't know what I was thinking.

Saturday is long run day. There's a new ultra on the calendar that I want to do so I figured I better do some regular 30km runs in preparation. Strangely enough, I woke up on Saturday with sore hamstrings. So I decided I'd do 25km instead. As I was running, my hamstrings were just so fatigued and tight. And I was also annoyed because I just remembered I have to work ALL next weekend so I would not get a long run in then. But 25km would have to do. Anyway, my legs were getting pretty tired so I decided to cut the run shorter to 20km. Heading home, up the terribly steep hill along Plenty River, I had the pleasure of icy cold horizontal rain to battle. I cut the run short at 18km. My hamstrings were killing. Oh well, I could do 18-20km on Sunday and with the fatigued legs that would be similar to a 30km run all in one go.

So today I slept in. My achillies hurt as usual. Perhaps I would just do a workout down at the track. I decided to warm up with Sarah's MTM warm up and my achillies felt great so maybe I could do a real run. I thought it would be good to go running around the trails near Blue Lake. So I stepped outside and it was raining. I was wearing my Five Fingers. I was not going to run in the mud in Five Fingers because they are too slippery. So I went down to the track and this is what eventuated:

Warm up jog to track.

Prized Lane 3 was being used!!! So I went in Lane 7.

400m hard
pushups x 15 (full pushups only, I refuse to do girly pushups)
400m hard
squats x 40
400m hard
assisted pull ups x 15
400m hard
crunches x 40
400m hard
pushups x 15

jog home.

Each 400m got slower and slower. I swear my legs were moving as fast as possible but my legs were fatigued. It was a good workout. I kinda wish I had bothered to go for a real run though because I have clocked up less than 50km this week.

Night vision

During the week I run early and am home before first light. I have really poor night vision and lately my weekday runs have not been that good. My area has poor lighting, the street lights are far apart, and because there are so many trees, if you are lucky enough to find yourself under a street light you still can't see anything because a tree will be blocking the light. Once I actually ran into a tree branch. It was so dark I didn't even blink and the leaves scratched my eyeball.

I have to slow down and be conscious of lifting my feet high off the ground so I don't trip over anything I can't see. The headlights of oncoming traffic is blinding so what I see is either total darkness or blinding light.

Running on the track is ok because there are 4 lights at one end of the track and the white lines are just visible all the way round the track. I can't focus at a good distance infront of me though because it is too dark for my eyes to focus and they start to hurt. So I look at the silhouette of the tree tops against the sky and crane my neck at a strange angle. Of course I can't run on the track every day - I would lose my hill running fitness and I might die of boredom.

Next time I run past the local army barracks I should drop in and ask them for some night vision goggles.

Birthday running

This weekend we went down to mornington for my birthday. I got a new running skirt!!! So now I am fairly well stocked in the skirt department. Gave it a test run this morning down by the beach. This is one of their new models and it is great to run in. It was a beautiful morning to have a birthday run:

Great Train Race!

Last Sunday was the Great Train Race. My time was 1:09 and I beat the train by a long shot. The train this year was held up either due to faulty breaks or a driver who slept in, depending on where you read about it. Even if the train ran its usual time I still would have just beat it so I am very happy with that.

It was really cold up in Belgrave, but the sun was out and it was a perfect day for running. I started about 20m from the front and even still there was a lot of overtaking people, I was also being overtaken a lot. Due to the narrow road quite a few people fell over. I was surprised at the number of casualties near the end that needed medical treatment - there were quite a few unconcious people on the side of the path in the last 200m. I don't know why this is. The conditions were perfect. Maybe they all live closer to town where it's flat and they just pushed too hard on the hills. Maybe even though they looked fit, they weren't.

I wore the Nike Frees because the hills in the Five Fingers tend to make my achillies worse but I think I could've done ok in the FFs. Maybe next year.

New skirt

The Aus Skirtsports site was having a sale this week so I bought a new skirt and also a T. This skirt is made from "speedsilk" and is much lighter than my other running skirt.

I took it for a test run today. It's a dream to run in - maybe better than my other skirt, but a pocket full of phone and keys is much more bouncy in this one. It's a great summer skirt. It was 6 degrees this morning so my legs were pretty cold! Did start to warm up after 10k though.

Dad and J are visiting this weekend. We are all entered in the Great Train Race tomorrow. I am still undecided about my outfit! It will be so cold in the hills. Warmer red skirt or tights? Singlet or T? Shoes will be Nike Frees as the hills will aggravate my achillies.