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Tuesday 8 May 2012

Sunday running and lunch at Britomart Country Club



It was incredibly difficult to crawl out of bed and I only manage it, barely, after 5 attempts. But I am so damn glad I did because I felt insanely happy whilst running up the hill. Which is rather unusual for me because I always curse when I see hills.My current plan is to do tempo runs on a treadmill on Tuesdays, threshold on Thursdays with my colleagues and long runs on Sundays and complement that with 2 circuit training and 1 yoga class. Long  easy runs are my favourite as I can listen and hum my favourite tunes whilst and not get hung up on my overall pace.


Running on Sunday mornings are superb because there aren't many people out and about even at 10 a.m and it feels like I have the whole park to for myself to run in. I was surprised that the shin splint that has been bugging me since my tempo run has fizzled away but I played safe and ran only 10km instead of 14km as I'd wanted to. No point to upset my legs this early and then throw my running plan into a complete whack. I have no planned events until possibly August so I will have plenty of time to fine-tune what works for me and what doesn't. I should look for a few 10k races between now until a half marathon. 




I never fail to treat myself after the enormous effort to force myself out of bed on Sunday mornings. Some days will be a shopping trip at Lululemon but I have forbidden myself to go there until I have done a 16km run. Lets see how disciplined I can be. We went to Britomart Country Club for lunch with my Grabone voucher which is expiring soon. The service is pretty reasonable and our waiter apologise profusely because our drinks took so long. I had fish with risotto cake which was very flavourful but salad was in a puddle of oil. I didn't finish the salad. Hubs ordered lamb salad which was very average. We both concluded that we may come back for lunch when it gets warmer because it's got a nice sitting area but won't drive to town just to eat there. There are just too manygood options in Auckland to choose from.

Moving on from lunch, I started looking for some running materials online to keep me motivated and get more bang out of my training . Last year I was convinced to buy Jack Daniels' Running Formula after reading all the great reviews but I have to honestly say that the book is too scientific for my liking and I never got very far. I think it's a very informative book but I am just not there yet so I hope one day I will have a use for it. I really want to run a full marathon in the near future and I have promised myself once I crack the sub 2 hours mark for a half marathon I will honour that promise. My job now is to achieve a sub 2. I am hoping that I can achieve 2:09 in the next half marathon with more consistent training. I just want to be realistic at this point. If I were to set my goals too high I might be hugely disappointed and throw in the towel altogether. Back to reading materials, I have decided on these two:


I am an avid follower of HRG's blog and she'd shared some very valuable information from Runner's Body and I am very interested to understand the physiology of running and take the guess work out of why my body reacts a certain way.



 The other is Run Less Run Faster based on the formula developed by Furman Institute. I like the fact that this book advocates running 3 quality runs and complement it with 2 sessions of cross training. This fits really well into the amount of time I can allocate for running whilst keeping things interesting for me. I love running but I also enjoy other activities like weight training, cross-training and yoga to keep things fun for me.

What is your favourite running book?

What training plan are you following at the moment?

Do you have any good running books / running plan to recommend?


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