February 2017

[Sweder]

Sunday plod, 12.9 kms
1:57:07
Average page: 9.05 min/km
Calories burned: 1,181
Average HR: 112

A weird old session this Sunday. I set off around 8:40 in my road shoes, heading vaguely Twittenward, with no intention of actually flogging myself up and down the Medieval Stairmaster. I bumped into David Stacey and handed over his Almeria Half medal, kindly donated by Jules after David had left his on a bedside table in the NH.

I left the Twittenistas to do their thing, gently moseying through town. I bumped into them in the high street and again at the bottom of fearsome Keere Street. I felt a bit of a fraud. A few sniffles aside I could easily have joined in, yet the MAF routine prohibits it. Just walking slowly up some of these would send my heart racing past 125, so onward I shuffled, even having the audacity to stop at Ground Coffee for a barely-earned Flat White.

I set sail for home, switched road runners for offies and harnessed the hounds. About 20 minutes in I started to question all this. I can cope with the lack of beer, bread, rice, pasta and the prohibition of sugar, but denying myself the pleasure of attacking a steep hill slick with mud at full tilt is really too much. I ran, I jogged, I walked. My legs were a tad whiny, following their battering in Almeria last Sunday, yet it was all horribly easy. This terrain is not made for Maffetone, I grumbled inwardly.

Every now and then I'd glance at my Adidas watch. It started playing up, giving me bizarre HR readings. I re-set it three times on the run. The average HR across the three recorded runs is 112, so I guess I took it easy enough. I'll keep this up for another week but after that I'll have to throw in some livelier sessions. I run for fun, and this, I can assure you, ain't my idea of fun.