A Double Up Running Day!

Hello blog lovers.

As you can see, the determination is still here.  Five days into exercise regime, 4 days into healthy eating.  I think this must the longest 'start' for ages.  I've normally caved in by now!  But those scales when I stood on them, if they could talk they would have said "Gee woman, you sure got a lot a hard work ahead of you!"  I could almost imagine the laugh at the end!

So this mornings session was with the Thursday Morning group, with three lovely ladies, Charlene, Janet and Diane, just a small group today.  DiscoRich's group was just a bit bigger than hours, but both smaller than last week as we have all had to return to work.

DiscoRich took his group through woods, let me tell you, it was a mud fest!  Me, well I was being a little kinder to my group, I was going through the Cinder Path, so all on pavements and paths!  No mud, well maybe a little sticky on the cinder path, but I was expecting a relativly mud free run.  We set off out of the rec and turned right. It had started to rain just a little bit, but I didn't think it was going to be a torrential downpour.  Apparently last night it came down in bucket loads, I must have slept through it as I didn't notice it.

It was a slow jog to the path, now bear with me, I just said about the torrential rain last night, and the fact it was raining again, and it's been the wettest December since forever, the path that I chose to go down was a bit wet.  The leaves had all mulched up where the school children and the mums and dads had been using this to get to the school.  So if felt like we were running in the woods!  What with the trees and the fields around, and the babbling brook on our left,  we couldn't possibly called wooses!  But further on along the path it was even more of an adventure.  The path was flooded!  There was water pouring from the woods onto the path and running down towards us.  I guess it shows that we are actually running up hill when we go along here (I hadn't noticed before as it looks quite flat really!)  There was no way around it, we could step to the sides and squish in the squish mud, or we could just run through it and just embrace the water!

Diane, Janet, me and Charlene

I had to take a picture of it, here take a look for yourselves, it doesn't really do it any justice this picture, but there really was quite a lot of it pouring out from the sides.  If you look along the path you can see a person, we actually stopped until she caught up with us so that she could take this picture of us!

Can you see our 'photograper!

At the end of the path Janet and I waited while I sent Diane and Charlene off to do the loop around the estate.  I felt justified in not running with them as I was planning on going out again in the evening.  After they came back we continued our run back to the rec.  I was quite cold actually and beginning to think that maybe I should have ran with them instead.  I have done an awful lot of exercise this week, but I needed to do that, I want to get my routine established, and do as much as I can for most days of the week!  When I had thought about what I had done this week I was quite surprised, and even started to think about not going to track in the evening.

It was a slow jog back to the rec, Charlene had almost ran her self out.  She is so.....fidgety, she wants to get in there and do it, but with out training first!  The jog around the loop with Diane she was let of the leash, and she did her own thing.  Diane came around first looking puffed out, with Charlene coming around second, all sprinted out.  She will get there though, once you know, your know and then just work on it.

It was good to get back to the rec, DiscoRich's group was already there, with very muddy runners!  Our shoes on the other hand we beautifully clean, it was the 'shoe wash' we had when we went through the flooded path!

Here, can you tell which group is which!

Which four is my group?!

Track Session

And so for my second running session.  It was the start of Track 2016 today, many people have come back, some are new to track, some just seem to belong to the track, and Mr. "Monkey Man" S. himself was there too.  These guys all look so fit!  It didn't look as if any of them had over indulged this Christmas!  This was going to be painful.

This time last year I was training for the marathon, I was also a stone and half lighter! I was doing ok on the track, obviously not as well as everyone else there.  But then there are not many group 1's or even 0's that turn up for track, I think they think is way to scary!  But my plan for today was to 'teach my body a lesson'.  Teach it that this is what is going to happen every Thursday, run in mornings and run in the evenings.  Thats the plan and that is what is going to happen.  I needed to 're-boot' my brain into thinking that Thursday evenings is training evenings.  Usually these sessions are based around the spring marathons, but even when I did it last year, I just did what I could, I did my best, pushed myself that little bit harder than I would in ordinary group runs, or indeed in solo runs.  And this is what is going to happen this year too, evening though I am not going to be doing an marathons!

CoachHels started with the warm up drills, PhysioMike gave us instructions on what the session was going to be.  To be honest, there was no way I was going to do all that he said, and I just plodded along going as fast I could within the expected effort that PhysioMike had said.

The thing I love about this session is.....everybody!  I was running around the track, at Old girl speed, at the back as usual, but when they all lapped me the encouragement I got from everyone is just tear jerking.  That's when you know you belong to one of the best clubs around.  "Come on Donna, you can do it"  "Good going Donna, great stuff"  "Keep going Donna, you're doing well!"  With comments like that coming from member of your running club, from the faster groups, it's just amazing!  I love being with this club, I love the members, and I love it that on Track Day, I am mingling with some of our best runners and there is not one cliquey element, anywhere, in our club!

So geeky stats, as you can see, it wasn't particularly fast, and only 2.5 miles as well. It should have been about 4 miles in all.  but I am going to be working on that now!  Watch and see.