On a lighter note, running!

And after yesterday’s somewhat heavier post…onto something lighter!

Like some cool things keeping me upbeat. During my time in London we walked past an office WITH A SLIDE. It didn’t look like any sort of special office. Just an average office. But with a slide. Naturally.Being the slight over-thinker that I am, this would give me anxieties about what outfit would be slide-appropriate each morning. To slide or not to slide would have to be a consideration depending on what I wore. I’d also feel a bit like a pilock. I mean, it’s cool. But it’s also work so…

I spotted this on a bench in Lee-On-Solent on the promenade. I love this!Like a woolly jumper for the bench to wear. Not sure who made it or where it came from but I love little things like this that add a bit of quirky character to a place. And help you believe in the kindness and loveliness of the human race again.

 

But moving on to running. Now obviously I know this is no news to anyone but dear God isn’t it hot? In the South of England we’ve being seeing temperatures of 28-34 degrees Celsius. It’s positively baking. On a random note, I’m also the biggest numpty around. I didn’t think my car had air con so I was driving to work desperately putting the windows down whenever there was traffic on the motorway, trying to cool myself. Then out of desperation as we gained speed again and I put my windows up, I noticed that the temperature dial looked a bit odd… and then if I pushed it the snowflake light in the middle came on. Ah. I do have air con. Actually it’s so good that after 15 minutes of it on I’m actually too cold. Yep, I’m 29 ladies and gentlemen. Though when I work from home (which I’ve being doing quite a bit these past few weeks due to Internet issues at work) the temptation to go and sit in my car has been rather strong. My flat is TOO HOT.

Anyway, back to running. It’s too hot. But my running hasn’t actually been too bad, which makes me think that my fitness is really coming on nicely. My eight miles on Sunday, albeit highly sweaty, was actually great!

After the initial mile of “God this is awful”, I got into it and felt strong running. I took water with me and just relaxed into it.I then spent approximately 80% of the rest of the day in a state of over-heating. Not good. Us Brits are just not used to this! (Though I’m probably not helping myself by still eating porridge for breakfast and having hot drinks like coffee or hot chocolate…).

On Tuesday night I headed out on my own for a 5ish mile tempo and that also went well. I don’t think I’ll be hitting any PB’s in these temperatures, but it’s nice that I can get somewhat of a good training run in. My HR wasn’t too high either which is something I’m always cautious about during high temperature runs.

I mean, it’s not my best tempo paces obviously but for the conditions I’m really pleased. And considering I’m actually taking a different approach to marathon training this time. Basically I’m not running all my runs at one pace (i.e. 8 min/miles). I’m trying to make sure that at least two of my runs are fairly “slow” and then one speed session a week (whether that’s a tempo, a hard parkrun or an actual speed session). It’s going well, touch wood!

I have another obstacle race this weekend with my Bristol friends, so that’ll be good (though not really conducive to marathon training!). I’m actually quite looking forward to any water element of it as it’ll actually be the weather for it!

And now to leave on a final happy note. One of my favourite cards from my birthday (along with a Where’s Wally one, which entertained me for quite a while).

No truer story.

Have you got anything cool at your work? We have a vending machine. That’s about as good as it gets.

How have you been affected by the heat?

9 Replies to “On a lighter note, running!”

  1. That slide is such a hipster office- I bet they have bean bags and floor cushions for thinking meetings and stuff. My work of course has a climbing frame, but it is probably frowned upon for the teachers to go on it!
    The heat- argh! Actually yesterday wasn’t so bad, but earlier- no fun at all. I had a similar thing to you in the winter as I was de-icing my wing mirrors and then Andy told me (the second winter that I had it…) that if I put the back heater on it also heated the wing mirrors. Also one day I thought my air-con was broken but it turned out it was on fan and not cool, so it was just blowing the air from outside at me. I haven’t made that mistake again!
    I love that woolly bench- there is a town somewhere where mystery ladies wool-bomb things like lampposts and stuff. I can’t remember if it is for a reason, but it looks great. They were probably given some catchy name like knitting ninjas.
    Maria @ Maria runs recently posted…Music concerts in the summer time and a trip to a lavender farmMy Profile

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