2/10
Cool summer morning, blue skies and a chill in the air that didn’t withstand a brisk walk, let alone the running sessions.
And I forgot the heart rate monitor again.
Cool summer morning, blue skies and a chill in the air that didn’t withstand a brisk walk, let alone the running sessions.
And I forgot the heart rate monitor again.
Thirty minutes, with dog. Must remember the heart rate monitor next time. Aches and niggles went away as I ran, although I may pay for it on the back of my heel later (rubbed raw by some shoes on Sunday and still a bit sore, nothing dramatic). Drizzling and cool – cool enough to opt for long sleeves. Did not want to get up, so the dog-running commitment is paying off as it forced me out of the house at a time when I would much rather have just shut off the alarm and gone back to sleep.
Reminding myself that the plan for now is just to run three times a week. Changing diet, adding in cross-training, adding in weights etc must all wait – experience, multiple experience, has taught me that I can’t change it all at once. Until the end of July, all I’ll do is run three times a week. Then, in August, I’ll look at what I’m eating and planning to eat. September, add in the cross-training (although I’ll probably swim in Portugal too), and finally add in some weight training in October. Might look at the number of times a week I’m running in November, as that’s when the training for the London marathon will kick in: but by then, I should have good habits slowly but firmly established.
Long run looping around the park with the dog; Garmin beeps to tell me I’m going too fast … should I go backwards? Then it seems to sort itself out. It’s a little cooler, and a little less humid, but the cloud cover means that the sunscreen I finally remembered to buy may not have been as urgently needed as all that. I still put it on.
The dog decides that an orange roadworks cone is the stuff of the devil, or at least an alien intent on abducting us, and either way must be subdued or repelled by much barking. A tug of war over a dead bird – I win, and he doesn’t get close enough to try and pick it up. Or roll on it. The uphill parts of the park suddenly seem so very much more uphill …
Not quick, but done – and that’s what I keep reminding myself counts and is the point. I’m never going to win prizes for speed, but what I need is exercise, not prizes.
Loop down into the park in searing humidity at 6am – which is wrong in just so many ways. T forgot, I think, that I was supposed to be picking up the dog.
Restarted for 60/90 repeats; rabbits playing in the park, feigning disinterest. A hedgehog on the shaded path by the river, curling up as I asked whether it wanted to come and eat the slugs in the back garden. Running, arms high, as though towards a finish line but merely dodging the nettles.
Hitting the reset button.