Sprung

Having geeked it up a bit over my last few posts, I thought it was time to reflect a little on the other aspects. Plus my brain is a bit fried from too many night shifts, as evidenced by all the gramatically errors of my last post.

Last night I changed into my running gear at work and headed out onto the dirt trails following the Yarra river. What a perfect night for running. One where I wished I was carrying a camera. First I just felt really good running at a nice easy pace. I was able to take in the sites. Being Spring and with some recent rain the grass was bright green, instead of the usual dry brown of the last couple of years. The sun was heading towards setting and was sending awesome streaks of pink, orange and yellow to contrast the dark clouds. A sunshower resulted in a double rainbow. To add to the enjoyment I passed a mob of twenty or so kangaroos with their young joeys. They were a great site spread out in the orchards as I ran past.

I became lost in my surroundings, the act of running and within myself. It was a perfect run that felt like I had been out forever, but was over sooner than expected. I definitely reached the runner's high.

I'm now into the 4th cycle of Base 1. I feel like my running is getting better. My energy levels are on the rise, which is impressive considering how work has been lately. Also, it's not just that I'm feeling better subjectively, my objective measure is also showing improvement. My Maf Test from last week demonstrated some significant improvement, as detailed in the table below:


dateHRpace
27/08/081495:34/km
12/09/081495:10/km

Comments

  1. R. Jeffrey Davis17 September 2008 at 00:25

    I miss running along the Yarra river. Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tea17 September 2008 at 01:13

    Running by kangaroo's...that's one I haven't done. :) What an amazing picture that would have been.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ewen17 September 2008 at 20:33

    That's a good improvement. Great to see it paying off already.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mike18 September 2008 at 16:46

    shouldn't that be 'grammatical errors' ...... :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sandy Point Half Marathon

Image
Any race that uses a picture of myself as promotion makes me think I should compete in it. Wouldn't want to disappoint the masses. Last year my race slow and cold over the same course. A time of 1:30:20, was disappointing and a kick up the backside to get to what really works in training. Since then I have put in a lot of consistent kilometres and have seen some improvement. I was definitely going to race faster this year. Based on my race results over the last few months the hope was to see if I could get down to near 1:24:xx. The weather was very different this year. Far from cold, in fact I think it was our warmest night in a few months. However, there was a Damaging Winds warning issued, with predictions of 65km/hr gales to slow things downs a bit. The winds hit, according to the weather sites: NNE averaging around 50km/hr with gusts of 76km/hr. That made for some interesting race tactics. Luckily the rain held off until after the race. For some reason I felt ready with only 1...
Read more

Fitting Together

It's interesting how easy it suddenly becomes to prioritise aspects of life. I have missed plenty of training in the last week, but for the first time in my life, it really, and I mean really doesn't matter. That's not to say I am throwing training on the back burner. Far from it. Of course I am finding it hard working out how life now all fits together, but I am thoroughly enjoying the process. Training is now just part of the puzzle. What was a very easy load a couple of weeks ago, is now just manageable. This is what I anticipated. As things settle down and I work out of few things the training load should again become much easier. At the moment it looks like I will be able to get in all the key sessions, so in reality it is going fine.
Read more

The Gorge

For work I am currently stationed away from my normal branch. This is a recent roster change that I am not too happy about due to a number of reasons that I won't go into here. The good thing is that it gives me different roads to ride on when commuting. Nothing like a bit of variety to break things up. One particular bit of terrain that I now get to cover is known as the Gorge. It is exactly as the name suggests. The road that takes you into the Gorge is simple. One side is a very wide bend, that could almost be thought of as a straight road. The other side involves a couple of reasonable bends, which wouldn't normally be an issue, but can be when hitting speeds of 60km/hr on the descent. I want to make it clear that the Gorge is far from the toughest of climbs, while quite steep on both sides it is relatively short. So what is it about the Gorge. For me it has provided a good bench mark for my cycling fitness. Back when I first started on the bike it took all my ef...
Read more