Taking it easy

A short but sweet interim blog post to cover off the lead up to Endure 24, which will have it's own monster post at some point next week.

Gym. No really, a visit to the gym

The day after a long run, surely a day for basking in the glory, aching a bit, moaning a bit? Rather than do some or all of these things I headed out the door at 6am & got across to the gym. 30 minutes on the bike at a low tempo was ideal for easing out my legs following the exertions of the previous day.
Cooled down with some pull downs & another arm / back machine that seemed a lot harder & I could only manage 15 reps! Better than zero I guess & worth persevering with.
I felt pretty good, buoyed by a more than satisfying weigh in before I left home. I'm starting to see the benefit of eating better & looking after myself more, dropping back under 14st for the first time in 3 months. The key now is to continue the good work & incremental losses. I still made the rookie gym mistake of forgetting a towel. I'll have to wander round with one round my neck to get into the habit, though that might have me trying to throw it ala Mr Perfect!

Healthy breakfast after the gym visit

Mr Perfect never forgot a towel

Comedy

Tuesday evening brought a meet up with Northern Mike & some comedy in the form of Nick Helm. If you've not see him before, here's a taster (not really safe for work). He's a man of many skills, stand up, song, poetry & dance. His whole act can verge on what appears to be a monumental breakdown as he rides the waves of colossal lows & turn it up to 11 highs.

Not much headroom to play with

Back in December I'd been to see his Merry Christmas Mother Funkers (slight correction) whilst still trying to reconcile things with Paula. Audience participation is the key to a Nick Helm show & as he had the whole crowd singing along to a song about a break up with a chorus "I'm so depressed I want to kill myself, kill myself" had me creasing up at the morbid humour at what was a dark time for me. It was probably one of the moments I realised everything was going to be all right whatever happened, I still had my sense of humour.
On Tuesday Mr Helm was on top form as ever & introducing us to some acts we'd not seen before & acting as compère in between. At the end of it all he even had time for a quick photo. If you get the chance to see him live in person, take the opportunity, or check out his Heavy Entertainment or Uncle shows on BBC Three, he's firing on all cylinders at the moment.

The awesome Mr Helm

Technical Training

Work commitments allowed me to get to running group on Wednesday evening, although I'd advised Josie beforehand that I was looking for an easy session as a tune up for the weekend rather than anything tempo based.
Glen & I were joined by Victoria & headed down to the Flitch. Since meeting Glen towards the end of May he's started to attend Hatfield Forest parkrun & does my job for me, promoting the event to anyone that will listen whilst we're out.
One of the benefits of the running group is that we're all training with different goals, allowing Glen to work on some 200m tempos whilst I concentrated on getting more movement from my arms. In five years of running this is the first time I've really looked at technique & tried to refine what I do. I'm aware I can be a lot more efficient & in turn change that energy use into a better pace or longer endurance.
Of course one thing will never change, my propensity to like a sprint finish. So after 3 easy laps I joined Glen on his tempo run, even giving him encouragement to kick a bit more in the last 50m! I'm an awful student!!! On the last rep, despite my original protestations I decided that I fancied a bit of a sprint. I let Glen set off before me & started to stride out into a nice tempo, slowly going through the gears before throwing everything at the wall and really opening the legs up. According to Strava I got down to mid 3:00/km pace, not something I could ever sustain, but enlightening to see how fast you can go when completely fresh & warmed up.
After that exertion I gave the warm down my full attention, thanked Josie, saying goodbye to the other guys before making my way home.

Taking it not so easy

Only a clown would schedule a squash game just 48 hours before the start of an endurance event wouldn't they? A nice gentle 40 minute work out, Instead what I got was a lung busting, leg straining, shoulder slamming ultra competitive match! We couldn't have been more evenly matched, a 3-1 loss for me but high scoring & close games all of them. Putting my already slightly dodgy shoulder into a wall probably wasn't the wisest thing, although there really was no other place to go!
Sure, not the wisest thing to do, but a very enjoyable game. My cardio for squash is good at the moment, all I need is to play a bit more & get my shot execution back.

Endure Prep

Any spare moment this week has been geared towards Endure preparation. Baking the world's ugliest brownies, sorting out running kit, trying to work out what is actually needed for camping, making endless lists.

All the gear, no idea....

I think I'm done with baking, the brownies were an abomination, probably tasty but could do with a paper bag over them. Thankfully my cooking skills are far superior & I'm taking both mac & cheese & some sausage rolls across to the endurance event.

Fugly brownies

One last minute visit to Runners Need to pick up some no water washing product (yes, sounds really appealing) & some nip guards ended in a predictable manner. With my Saucony Kinvara 5's shot & taken to the running shoe retirement home it was time to replace them. I'd seen an exact replacement online for £70 & was waiting to pick them up, but typically RN had a sale on. They also had some Kinvara 6 with an awesome paint job, but at £130 I simply couldn't justify the expenditure. Instead I opted for a pair of Saucony Breakthru. Very similar in construction to the Kinvara, slightly heavier & hopefully enough of a structure to last a bit more than 350km.
Thankfully they only had conservative colour schemes available.......