Up's and Down's

It's been a funny kind of week, so what have I learned?

That training for a Marathon is a case of 2 steps forward, 1 step (occasionally 3 steps) backwards!

On Monday, as you will have seen we did our first 15 minutes in one hit and it went incredibly well, when my coach said stop I hadn't been waiting for the last minutes to tick by, I thought 'cracked it - let's go for the 26 now' which was odd because the day before I had really struggled with a 2 minute lope/1 minute walk.  The next day was a repeat of the 15 minutes and it was a completely different story, I was struggling from the off.  Wednesday I was on my own, I loped for 10, walked for 10 then loped for 5, again, a real struggle.  Thursday took me back to 15 minutes, which was OK until the last few minutes.

Then there was Friday (cue scary music, dramatic lighting and lightening sound effects) RAIN!!!!!.  Now I'm not a wimp but this was heavy, continuous rain of the very wet variety and at present I have no waterproof clothing other than a purple mac and a brolly which I couldn't quite see would work.  The jacket I wear for the first few minutes of my lope and then casually tie around my waist is quite heavy and I felt that once wet would take on the role of a little person that I would then have to carry.

There was more though, I also have a little niggle in my right knee which seems to have swollen ever so slightly.  I did a bit of self diagnoses online and the resulting opinions appeared to be that it will either need to be amputated, operated on, or a couple of ibuprofen and a bag of frozen peas should clear it up in a day or two.  I decided to go down the ibuprofen/frozen pea route.  Some of the online discussion groups also suggested that running on grass should be easier to begin with as tarmac is hard - you don't say!!!!.  All things considered I made the decision that Fridays training should be held indoors, on carpet (well it's a bit like grass).  I did a 15 minute lope, 5 minute walk, 10 minute lope, diagonally up and down my lounge whilst trying to work out the ever so complicated relationship of five people yelling at each other on the Jeremy Kyle show.  It's very weird how much easier loping indoors is, I can't work out quite why that should be.  My dad suggested that you can't build up a lot of speed when you only have the length of the lounge 'how many strides can you fit in the length of your lounge' he said - Oh, you would be surprised just how many strides 'I' can fit in any length without actually going backwards, I rather think he is vastly underestimating the speed I go at when I'm outside!

Maybe, it's the carpet, does it really make that much difference? if it does there could be a little business opportunity here - trainers with carpeted soles??.  I know what your thinking - wrong horse again! Back to the job in hand .....

Today is a rest day which is just as well because it's still raining, the ibuprofen and frozen peas seem to have helped a little but we shall see for sure tomorrow when rain or shine I will go out and do my first 20 minutes!