Thursday 28 May 2009

15 Weeks to Go!

After the aching legs of last Monday I made it along to Spin class at Glasgow Club Easterhouse this Monday night, and it was good to get back into it after the break! Tuesday night I had Body Balance class as usual. With doing so much running and Spin I really enjoy Body Balance as an alternative to the high impact exercising! Unfortunately I then came down with a cold and so I wasn’t able to get out running again until Sunday. I think my legs were still feeling the effects of the cold however, as unlike my runs of the previous week where I averaged 12kph for 2.5k and then 11.5kph for 3.22k (2 miles), I ran 4k averaging 10.5kph in a dreadfully slow time of 22mins 56secs,! It was a real struggle, I had to push myself to get to 4k! My legs just felt they had nothing in them if I tried to run faster!

As it was a bank holiday Monday I went a run in the morning again, this time I managed to get to 5k but again it was slow! I did it in 28mins 27secs averaging 10.5kph again! My first mile wasn’t too bad at 8m32s but then my second and third were 9m11s and 9m50s! As I said, I really hope it was simply from being ill in the week and I hadn’t quite recovered yet! After the run I went to the gym at Glasgow Club Easterhouse and used the weights machines there (kept away from the treadmill though!) Was nice to get all that over with in the morning and then enjoy the rest of the holiday Monday relaxing!

Well, it was a bad week but at least it happened early on in my GSR training, so hopefully now that I’m feeling better from the cold I’ll get back to running faster and have more to write about!

16 Weeks to Go!

Hello, my name is Claire and this is my blog for the Great Scottish Run 10k on Sunday 6th September! For the last 18 weeks I have been writing a blog for the Ignis Asset Management Women’s 10k, so if anyone is reading this who read that blog, thank you for sticking with me! For anyone new to my blog, here is a brief summary of what my blogs are about. Basically, I write about my training week! A good week for me would be Spin class on Monday night, Body Balance on Tuesday night, running Wednesday and Thursday nights, rest on Friday then running on Saturday and Sunday, plus I do weights 3 times a week, and often go swimming on a Saturday also. On a bad week… I do considerably less than that! A normal week falls somewhere between the two!

My aim when I started my blog at the beginning of the year was to achieve a 10k in 55mins. Up to that point my previous best 10k was just over 58mins, achieved in September at the Cumbernauld 10k, and my best 5k time was 27mins 21secs, which I did on a training run on a cold Autumn evening after work! Over the last few months I have ran a 5k in 26mins 41secs, and did two 10k’s in training at 58mins 44secs and then 56mins 47secs. At the Women’s 10k I got a new PB of 56mins 30secs plus, for the first time in a 10k race, ran the full distance without stopping. With the improvement I’ve made already this year, and with 16 weeks to go till the GSR I really feel positive that I will be able to run a 10k in 55mins by September. My other aims are to run a 5k in under 25mins, plus I would like to at least once try run say a 15k. I tend to run for 10k maximum then stop, so would like to see if I could run longer, even if it’s much slower!!!

Well for my first week of GSR training, it took me a while to get going, mainly because my legs were aching a bit on Monday so I gave Spin class a miss to recover! I went to my Body Balance class on Tuesday and it felt good to stretch my muscles, plus it was encouraging to hear that quite a lot of people in the class had ran the 10k on the Sunday! Other commitments meant I wasn’t able to do anything Wednesday or Thursday night, so it was Friday by time I was able to get out for a run again. I’d worked out that to run a 10k in 55mins I need to run at an average pace of 10.9kph. But now I’ve decided to try push myself to run faster so that maybe come race day 55min pace doesn’t feel that fast after all!! So Friday night I went out and ran 2.5k in 12mins 29secs, averaging 12kph, which is 50min pace! Now I’m not saying I could have run a full 10k at that pace but it’s a good start! Went to the gym at Glasgow Club Kelvin Hall on Saturday morning and had a good workout with the treadmill, weights and exercise bike, then Sunday morning I went out and did a 2 mile run, in 16mins 49secs, an average speed of 11.5kph. I did the first mile in 8m 12s but a bit slower for the second in 8m 37s. Both Friday night and Sunday morning runs were the fastest I’ve done over these distances, and I’m hoping that over the next few months I’ll get a few more PB’s over various distances!

Monday 25 May 2009

Monday 26th May

George Bowie is still managing to get regular runs in as he prepares for the Great Scottish Run and as he has a boxing match coming up soon, he is also upping his training in the gym. So he's pretty happy with his fitness levels.
Des on the other hand is still claiming that he is unable to do anything because he fell down the stairs and broke his arm. He has been told that he could be doing a bit of power-walking in order to maintain the rather poor standard of fitness which is currently has, but he's not up for that. He says that there is a certain degree of manliness to sprinting round the East End of Glasgow building up a sweat, but he definitely has issues with just strolling along in the style of an olympic speed-walker. Apparently, you are risking a great deal of abuse in the Robroyston area if you put on lycra shorts, a headband and strut around with a wiggle.

Monday 11 May 2009

11th May 2009

Is there no limit to the lengths Des McLean will go to to avoid training for this race?

George Bowie has been out running. Dr Prockter has been pounding the streets. And what about Des? Following a training regime which extended as far as a bit of hoola-hooping for 5 minutes last week, he came in with his arm in a sling this week. He claims there was no drink involved in the sustaining of a broken arm, that he was sleep-walking and fell down the stairs. The odds on that being true are the same as the odds for Des coming home in first place in the 10k in September. He says he should only be out of action for a couple of weeks and will then have plenty of time to get race fit.

Friday 1 May 2009

Well the training is going well now - at least for some of the Bowie at Breakfast team! George is back to full fitness following the hair transplant and has been out pounding the streets (when the weather has been good) and on the treadmill (when it wasn't so inviting). Dr Prockter has managed a couple of longish runs and is now trying to decide whether to go for the 10k or the Half Marathon in September.
And what about Des? No running, but he said he did do 5 minutes with the hoola hoop this week!