Double Workout Saturday

Saturday's are going to typically be a double workout day for the foreseeable future.  My day started with me being one of the first people to arrive at Milton Country Park this morning to get ready for the weekly 5k Parkrun.  I hadn't realised I was so much earlier than normal, but the park was pretty deserted when I got there at 8:30am.  I'm sure I'm normally only 10 minutes later, but those 10 minutes clearly make a big difference.  Being so early I had a longer than normal warm-up, running 2 miles around the entire site, and still having loads of time left before the race was due to start.

I met up with a few of my clients, past and present, and had a brief chat before making my way to near the front of the field for the race to get underway.  I was hoping I'd shave a few seconds of my time from the previous week.  However, having already run the entire course, I knew it was going to be a lot more slippery today.

Once the race was underway there was a massive sprint from 5 to 6 guys at the front, who quickly sped away from the rest of the field.  I'd never seen such a big leading group before.  I think I settled into about 15th position and slowly worked my way up to 11th overall at the finish, which was my same finishing position as last week.  There was a time when I'd consistently be in the top 5, so I still have lots of improvement to do if I'm to get back to that status.  It's possible that the standard has vastly improved in recent months.  Four guys finished in a time under 17 minutes, which is pretty good for what is effectively a cross country 5k in muddy conditions.  However, I can't be too disappointed with my time of 18 minutes 19 seconds.  A 14 second improvement over last week.

Once Parkrun was completed I met up with five of the women Channel rowers that I'm training this year.  All five were also present for the Parkrun, with three of the crew absent for legitimate reasons (work, holiday and illness).  I worked the girls quite hard, but also used the opportunity for a workout for myself, doing everything that I asked of them.  This does mean that I know exactly how hard I'm training them.

My intention had been to also go for a 10 mile run after the kettlebell workout.  I said goodbye to the ladies and contemplated my planned additional run.  I decided against it for a number of reasons, mainly because I was feeling pretty exhausted already, but also because my knee still isn't back to full fitness, which I told myself was the deciding factor in cancelling my run.

I'd also planned on making a trip to Advanced Performance to look for a new pair of trail shoes.  The dear running club members at Sweaty Betty had given me £65 of vouchers for Christmas, so I thought I'd see if I could spend them.  I was specifically after some shoes that would prove to be up to the job of running 80km in the Swiss Alps this August.  I'm not expecting them to last that long, but I wanted to see if I could find a pair that I'd be happy to use for that sort of run.  On running forums the Inov 8 shoes come highly recommended.  After trying on a pair of Inov 8 shoes and some very good Addidas trail shoes, I parted with my vouchers and £24 of my own money and left the shop with a pair of Roclite 315's.  Tomorrow I'll be running 3 laps of Royston Heath with some of the girls from the Sweaty Betty running club, so I aim to try them out on one of the 4 mile laps.

How long will they stay this clean?