It seems hard to believe that it will be Easter next weekend. The weather we are having now seems more typical for the approach of Christmas, not Easter. What has happened to spring?
Yesterday I did find myself being defeated by the weather. Having trained a couple of clients during the day outside in the cold and the freezing wind, I couldn't face going out again for my own planned 10 mile run. I spent the time catching up on some admin instead, which I'm usually only to happy to neglect in preference of going for a run. This must surely indicate just how fed up I am with the weather.
I made up for my missed run by going for an 11 mile run this morning, whilst our wonderful spring weather did it's best to snow on me. London marathon is now just four weeks away. I can just see the weather changing for the weekend of the marathon. Do I wish I had travelled to Rome last weekend with Jamshid, Chris and Suzy and ran the marathon there with them. I do, I do, I do.
Earlier in the week I forced myself to do some lung busting hill reps at Magog Down. This being Cambridge, we don't have that many hills to run up. Magog Down is as hilly as it gets. The steepest hill that can be found in these parts is probably about 200m long with a gradient of about 1:15. This probably doesn't sound much, but running up it 12 times at full effort absolutely floors me. I had to teach three kettlebell classes later that day, and I had to cut back on how much I usually do and do more observing instead. I think my clients thought I was being really lazy.
One of the clients I met yesterday is a new client who was having his first session with me. His goal is to get faster at 10k runs and half marathons. He has never tried interval training before, so I told him we were going to start by doing six 400m intervals. I explained that on the first one I only wanted him to go off at a perceived level of exertion of 7 to 8 out of 10. I didn't want him to blow up on the first interval. I then counted him down, "three, two, one - go". And to my surprise and horror he shot off at a great pace. I had to sprint after him with my lungs feeling like they were going to burst from my chest. I started to think I'd just found the first running client who can run faster than me, even though his half marathon times did not indicate this. As I started thinking about the need for me to bring a bike with me to train this guy he started to flag, much to my great relief. From there on it was easy for me to keep up with him. He'd just learnt his first valuable lesson about interval training and the need to pace yourself. He never repeated that initial turn of speed. His first 400m interval was done in 1 minute 23 seconds. After that the remaining five averaged about 1 minute 32 seconds, which is a massive difference.
If I cheat and include yesterday's run with my client as one of my own, then tomorrow's run will be my fifth run of the week. My marathon plan says 18 miles, but I might settle for 16.
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