Stepping things up a little...88km this week

Sunday 12/3/06 Ran 12.6km crosscountry race at John Forrest with the WA Marathon Club. My wristwatch time said 1hr 20 minutes 57 seconds. Heart rate at end was 156 which is rather low!!! for a race. I slept in on the morning of the race and drove like a maniac to get there, and then by the time I got organized, I ended up starting at the handicap of 16min 11 instead of the 20min 11 I was listed to begin at...

I was just too! leg weary from the previous day, and decided to take it easy and just enjoy the scenery, experience of running through the bush, treat it as more of a training run. Set one other goal which I achieved which was to run up "old faithful" or "Faithfulls hill" without walking. I forgot to check heart rate at the top but I reckon I would have been well into the 180's by the top...Ran as slow as possible to conserve energy and keep heart rate down enough to get to the top, but every time I felt like walking I just gave myself an ORDER mentally to keep going! Nursed a lot of calf soreness all the way also, especially on the bitumen sections...Knee absolutely hated the down hill and I had very little in the tank to climb the hills with sustained intensity, so these are some of the reasons for me going almost 23 minutes slower than I did last year when I ran 58 minutes 17.
Saw EPI there after he did pretty well to pick up a 2nd place.

My other reason for wanting to do this race was that it traverses the tracks KL and I have done a lot of hiking on, so I was keen to familiarize myself with where the race course is in relation to where we hike. Some awesome views of the city down below on the plain below the Darling Scarp here...Enjoyed the experience and did what I wanted to do.

Including my estimates for the basketball umpiring I did this week (7 games!), i reckon I have roughly run about 88km this week. Hit the 8 hours of training mark for this week, which is the first time this year I think. Plus am doing some higher intensity work now, so reasonably happy with what I did this week...A good weeks training...

Saturday 11/3/06 AMish; Umpired 4 games of basketball, and the last 2 involved a lot of hard running "suicides" style...was pretty tired after that...The 4th game was one of the highest standards of games I have umpired as yet. Skilled players and very fast ball movement and court coverage. On almost every change of possession (which was very quick!), I was sprinting desperately for the baseline trying to get there in time to have good position to see any fouls or violations. Enjoyed it a lot, but was pretty tired by the end.

PM; Ran 6.75km in 35min 27 (HR-162) with KL (my fiancee) riding her mountainbike alongside, it was a good workout for both of us where we are at. When she speeded up I had to spurt stride it out at about 70-85% to stay with her which made this session pretty close to a time trial...Afterwards my left knee and both calves were a little sore...and I was pretty tired! Course was one we have both done before around Altone Golf Course. I improved my run time by almost 6 minutes, and she improved her bike time by about 3 minutes....So pretty happy with this session. I had a bit left and could have finished off stronger but decided to just cruise over the line at the pace I had maintained for the majority of the way...