Thursday 16 October 2014

Fitday Thursday

Hello blog lovers.

You know how I love Tuesday club nights, well I love Thursdays just as much.  It's a whole day of running! And It's just perfect.  After the school drop off I met up with other PWR's at the rec.  DiscoRich is there with his crew, there seemed quite a lot of them today. And there was my group, just the two today, Michelle and Ariol.  And I think Auriol is getting to know me quite well as she has rocked up to the rec  with her older training shoes.  Of course we are going to be going through the woods, who cares that it rained most of the day yesterday and on Tuesday! My philosophy is if the sun is up then we run the woods.

Not only was the sun up, but it was shining in all it's glory in the blue sky! What a perfect sight He has created today. It seemed a while since we seen blue skies like that!  After the chatting for a few minutes we were ready to begin. We watched DiscoRich's group out of the gate, we followed in hot pursuit!  Well, a nice leisurely jog behind them.  They were heading for Scadbury Park, where we will be touching on later.

All though I don't mind the muddy bits,  it is difficult to get any sort of speed going on, so of course it's always better to be running on firmer ground rather than tip toeing through muddy bits.  So my route was going to be straight up the middle of the wood and then turn left at the top to run along there till we get to Botany Bay Lane.

We will then continue up to the road, turn right towards the pub,  and I shall try to avoid going in asking for a pint of lager and a bowl of olives, mainly because it will be way to early for beer and people will be talking about me! Oh, and lack of cash would have a huge part of that!  From there, we would turn right, up to the main road, cross over and through the woods.  At the end, pop back into the woods and......well we'll see.

I started the Garmin up and we chased after the faster group.  You can tell that there has been a lot of rain about, Dog Poo ally was awash with muddy rain(?) washed down from the woods. Believe me, it is a good idea to think of it as muddy rain, it helps when you have to splash through it!........(it is rain really, honest)  So straight up the middle.  I led the way but I didn't know how long that was going to last for Michelle seemed to be on fire.  Thundering up the path like she was on a bungee cord dropping from a great height!  (Goodness knows where that analogy came from!) and goodness knows where the word analogy came from!   See I am not just a pretty face, brilliant writer, fantastic runner..... Ok, back to serious stuff.

A bit of mud just at the beginning slowed us down to that tippy toeing thing I told you about, but after that we just ran up to the top.  Aruiol ran the whole thing, Michelle found some wings and flew up there, I.....well.....I had a quick 20 second walk, waving at the girls with a breathless "Go on ladies, get up there, I shall be there in a sec"  I know, if I could talk and say all that then I should have kept my ass running!

The weather was just perfect as we ran along the top of the woods.  By this time I decided that the tip toeing had to stop.  Straight through the middle of every puddle, look for places that would probably have stones underneath the puddles rather than mud.  And that made it easier to keep going just a tad faster. When I have some more wages coming in I shall buy myself some trail shoes, I should have done it earlier this year, when I was earning a bit more cash!  Oh well, there is always Santa to smile at.

The road leading to the top and then on to the pub wasn't too bad.  There were some huge puddles on the first part but I avoided those, I think they would have been quite deep!  We crossed over the road to touch on the Scadbury Park bit!  Scadbury is a lovely park and quite big, but it's just that little bit further that we can do for us group 1'ers'. Just an extra mile and half and a few maybe another 15 or so minutes we could probably do some of this. But the bit that we can do is still good.  Although it runs along by the road the path is far enough in to let us know that we are still in the woods, and the puddles through were not that bad either, and being flat as well it was rather pleasant.

After coming out the other end we ran along Chislehurst road for a bit and we crossed the road to go into the woods at the gate rather than further down near the new bridge.  This is where the 10k runners came running towards, emerging from the woods on Sunday. They then turned right to run along to the bridge.  I gave the ladies a choice.  We could run along to the bridge, as they did on Sunday and then down Birchwood, but on the inside of the woods, or we could run along where they would have come out of, and running down to Dog Poo ally that way.  I didn't think there was much in it distance wise.

The Mystery tour is always popular!  And it would be a mystery tour as last time I tried to do this I got lost! But we still ended up going through Dog Poo ally as we were running down!

A brilliant run, thoroughly enjoyed it, but the satelittes didn't find us for bloomin ages, so I have no idea how far we ran, but I am guessing about 3.5 miles!  Fabulous, and fabulous company too!

Geeky stats


Track Session

I had no idea what was planned for tonights track session.  These are brilliant sessions.  Yes, all the fast runners come thundering past me, yes if there was choosing of teams to run in a relay race I would deffo be last to be chosen, and yes it's bloody had work.  But don't let that put you off!  It's discipline, it's no good just rocking up there and not being prepared to work as hard as you can, no, that's for you social runs, that's for your fun solo runs or even your runs in fancy dress!  These sessions are to help with your speed and timings and all stuff like that!

PhysioMike had this brutal session planned.  I should have guessed what it was like when he opened the envelope with the skull and crossbones sign on it. The fleet of ambulances were probably going over board! (only joking about the ambulances!)

After the warm up drills it was straight into 1200m park run paced jog, three laps of the track.  Of course I ran off pretty quick with the gazelles that I was running with, but I soon settled down into my own pace, at the back of course, but I felt I was running faster than my usual parkrun paced.  I put that down to the fact it's on the track, not the grass and it's all pretty much flat really.

I ran passed Mike and Hels who is also coaching today, and they called out our park run time, if we continued at that pace of course, mine was 30 minutes!  Oh maybe one day I will get a parkrun with that written on it!  Maybe!  Mr. S was also there as support, he has some runs planned for the weekend and was resting his monkey feet, "Come on Old Girl, don't stop" he said. Hmm, I may slow down though!

The I think on the second lap or last lap, Mike called out again 31 minutes.  Still faster than my PB.  The next session was parloufs.  Relays to those that can's speak Swedish, or Swiss, or french, or what ever language that is.  Mike put everybody into twos, handed one a baton and then sent the first people of running and the other half in opposite direction to meet their partners.  Hand over the batons when they meet up and then those that were running anti-clockwise jogged clockwise and vise versa.  Being special, and because I was in a team of three, our was a straight forward relay, no jogging round to meet up!  We get to wait for our team member to meet us.

So basically I could run as hard and as fast as I could (without puking up of course, not a good look in front of everybody) and then take a chill to wait for my other team member.  I was sent to take up the second position and I was jogging around to it when all the others started on the next session.  I really had to run fast to get into position before DiscoRich got there (which by the way, he did!) And then I ran around to the beginning to hand over to my team mate (and I didn't get her name, how rude of me!)

Twenty minutes of this, not even counting how many reps we do, it's a straight 20 minutes running!  So I was just going to do as much as I could, I didn't want to let my team mates down, I didn't want them to be standing around to long getting chilled (not that was going to happen it's a bloody lovely evening!)  But on the last relay I was running up to my team mate and she wasn't there, she had popped off to the ladies!  Mr.S persuaded me to carry on, take her place.  I knew the whistle was going to go any minute, but I did run towards DiscoRich.  He had run up about 50 meters to meet me!  I handed over the baton and then turned around and made my way back, because then it would be time up!

Another 1200m jog around and the was the end of the session.  I didn't manage to do the last 400 meters though!  Just 2 laps of the track and then a jog/walk to cool down!

Fantastic session, really loved it, tough, but I think I need that, discipline, toe the line, get on with it, no slacking!  And that's what I say to myself on the way round.  From all watching from the sidelines its all praise!  What a great club I belong to!





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