Saturday, May 9, 2009

A mixed bag

My left calf is still not quite right and in hindsight the waterfront 10km I did last Thursday was too fast too soon. Weird thing was it felt quite good at the time. Maybe I aggrevated it elsewhere? Maybe I'm getting old?

I didn't run this week - rest and a number of walks - but I did go for a short "confidence" run today (in the rain and hail no less!).

3.64km / 17:05 / 4:41min/km and got through it with no pain although I can tell its not 100%. Running pain free was the acid test about running tomorrow.

Run Auckland 3 tomorrow morning on a dead flat course. I don't intend to break any land speed records or my PB here - my aim is to get through without aggrevating things. If it looks like it is starting to play up I'll fall back to slow jogging or walking.

The weather is supposed to be wet and miserable so that'll make it interesting. Will be telling myself "not to run fast" which is a bit ironic.

Pretty frustrating to be honest.

On the plus side I've started back on a core excercise program at home with a number of "challenges". Last year I started the one-hundred-pushup online program got part of the way through - I think my best was 52 - but frankly got discouraged when it got tough. Come marathon time that sort of attitude isn't going to help much so it is also an excerise in perseverance.

This time I'm going to give it another shot with its cousins two hundred situps and two hundred squats programs. Having a strong core should help with posture and stability.

Pushups: Completed Week 3/Day 3.
Situps: Completed Week 1/Day 2 (my situp ability is sorely lacking)
Squats: Haven't started this yet but will be doing Week 1/Day 1 from Monday.

For those that don't live in New Zealand you got to feel for Steven O'Callaghan who stumbled at the finish of the recent Rotorua marathon. The elite althletes certainly look lean and mean.

4 comments:

Bruce said...

Good luck in the wet tomorrow if you run.

Mike said...

Have a great run. Look after the calf though. I like the idea of the 200 sit-up programme. I'm going to join you in that :)

Andrew is getting fit said...

I like the look of the 200 squats program too!

Pip said...

I'm guessing you've already finished your run. Hope it went ok. I've signed up for a six week small group training programme at the gym - 6 women, three one hour workouts a week. We did our fitness test and I managed 30 pushups in a minute (full - that is!). I pushed myself to muscle failure and collapsed with about 3 seconds to go, so I'll be looking to improve that!