Getting back on it

This post is brought to you by the great fresh taste of all my sponsors so far - love you all!

Anyway, dedication over and done with let's get down to the update. It's good for once. It seemed like I was getting into a rut but finally I got a great weekend of weather, no/less illness and well.....no excuses! Not that I was looking for excuses but picture the scene:

07:00, warm, snoozing, Sunday morning. It's okay outside but it isn't warm. The cats are just starting to be a pain in the arse. What do you do? The first option is always 'do nothing'. The ramifications of the nothing option are further cat annoyance, no sleep for me or Marie and ultimately a late run, probably in the dark. The other option is just to get on with it.

So, I took the latter option - not the easy option though. Breakfast was a power shake and black coffee - yummo! Breakfast was a cold affair as I elected to go for shorts today. So, I got all my other usual morning routine stuff out of the way (I'll spare you the details) and 09:00 comes around. Time to push through the energy gel disgustingness and get out of the door. I was thinking before I wrote this post, it would be neat to get the Garmin to plot another graph line of consciousness during run. The lower heart rate and even pace moments would be near slumber where the peaky, uneven pace sections would accompany elevated heart rate and higher states of awareness. The more aware I am of the pain of running long, the harder it gets to zone out into the even pace nirvana.

I found it [the zone] a few times today but I think having not had a long run for two weeks and getting over being ill has knocked my cardio fitness as well as putting me out of practice in terms of maintaining a pace and zoning out. It needs practice. I'll focus on this more so next week.

I have a theory. Whilst new routes are fun - the first time you run a new route - it sucks. You don't know how far round the route you are to gauge relative effort levels required to finish the workout. I'm going to stick with my Pinner/Harrow lap for my long runs. I know where I stand with this route. It's fairly flat with just the occasional incline and knowing the route makes zoning out more likely. I just hope I don't get bored.

We'll see.

Last week:

Mill
Gym
12.5

This week:

Mill
Gym
6
Gym
Rest/stretch
Rest
14+ (ideally 16)

Fingers crossed.