Marathon Mann

I know I have blogged about this before and it’s probably really annoying to those who really appreciate an extra hour or two in bed, but I can’t help it; I really love mornings!

The great thing about the morning is that you can get a few extra hours in the day “free of charge”, this extra time can be used for running, blogging, swimming, taking time over breakfast etc etc.

I think the barrier is that moment when the alarm goes off and your body is just crying out to stay in the warm bed and to go back to sleep.  The trick is to acclimatise yourself to break through that feeling, drag yourself up and get on with it.  I know to go out running on a dark, cold, wet winters morning at 5 AM when you are snug in bed is a tough thing to make your body do.   The thing is that if you can force yourself to do it once or twice, you can experience how good it feels when you are warmed-up and under-way.

A slightly less traumatic experience is to (as I did today), drive to the gym, which is quite a nice environment and they have luxuries like a sauna and jacuzzi and you can get coffee and stuff.

I think I will get up early again tomorrow because I want to go swimming (since I’m not running) and its going to be a clear morning, with an expected sighting of the International Space Station (ISS) at 5:55 AM, and I might try and get a time-lapse photograph (I saw a video on the BBC web site on how to do it).  Another great reason to get up early and make more time to enjoy the day.

In December, I ran a total of over 120 miles, which is more than I have for quite some time and it included the gruelling Chevin Chase on Boxing Day.  In the first week of January I ran over 40 miles.  Then, on Sunday I ran the gruelling Temple Newsam Ten!  Yesterday as I was running home from running club, I knew I was pushing it.   I was conscious of mild aches and pains and today, my poor legs simply felt tired.  Now, I have felt this way before and I am afraid that to just carry on at this level of intensity will simply result in injury!  So, with my “sensible hat” on, I decided to take the rest of the week off running, until parkrun on Saturday.  Hence this evening you find me at the swimming pool again, a brilliantly kind-to-the-body excercise that makes me beleive that we may have been made to be in the water!

I have even made an appointment with the physiotherapist, to get a general body “MOT” and massage.  It’s the first time I have arranged a physio appointment before injury!  I have found that visiting a good physio is money well spent and in my opinion, they don’t get much better than Coach House Sports Physiotherapy in Leeds (and no, they haven’t paid me to say that).  I have been there a few time with injury and have been very impressed.

I did something I’ve never done before today; run between home and the running club and back, as well as doing the training in-between. A total of about 11.5 miles.

The base of Rodillian Runners is at Stanly Rodillians RUFC at Manley Park Stanley.  It’s great to be associated with the rugby club because we get the use of the facilities at the club house as well as support a fellow local sports club.  All the club’s runners are also members of the rugby club.  We have even been known to have a joint training session with the rugby team and we may do again some day!

We did a 4 mile training route where faster runners double-back evey so often, the idea being we all finish pretty much together.  This evening however there wasn’t a huge amount of difference in the pace people were running so not that much running back.

As for the run back home, it was hard! Particularly just two days after the Temple Newsam Ten on Sunday.