Normally I would recap my weekend but I had a bit of a rubbish one so don’t really want to go through it. So I by-passed Monday’s post altogether.
What I will say is running over 10 miles on Sunday helped. I ran with the mentality of “sod my pace, I literally don’t care. I want to just get out and go.”
Average pace 7.51mins/mile and I happily sped up toward the end. Was this pace sensible for my first 10 miles in a while? No. Did I enjoy it? Definitely. Mentally I needed that run. And it didn’t actually feel that tough – I felt very relaxed and just let go. But my next long run won’t be like this as there’s really no point. I can push it on other shorter runs if I want to.
Onto slightly more lights things…rants and raves.
Rant: Making a tiny error when ordering our food shopping online. So this is more a rant at myself really.
Six lettuces. I’m pretty sure I only want two…how did I manage to order six?! I like salad, don’t get me wrong, but even that’s a bit much for me. Needless to say salads are going to be a big thing this week.
Rave: A while ago I mentioned that I wanted to get more into audio books as I have an hour driving commute to work and then home again. I work at the same place as my dad so occasionally we’ll share lifts but recently I’ve been more on my own and would listen to podcasts. But I’m getting through podcasts very quickly and I like to save a few for running.
So I’ve signed up to the month free trial for Audible (an audio book purchasing site) to try it out (I’m not being compensated or asked to write a review by them, I’m just sharing my experience). After the free month (where you get a free audio book), you then pay a monthly subscription of £7.99 and get one book credit a month which is equivalent to one audio book. This is a lot cheaper than just buying an audio book out-right but it is a subscription service. For me it’s something I’m willing to pay for at the moment as I have a lot of ‘dead’ time and I love books. I can listen to a book and read a book at the same time so there are no issues there (currently I’m reading Stephen King’s ‘Last Stand’ and it’s amazing).
I’ve just finished ‘Still Alice’ and it was incredible. Initially the author’s voice irritated me but then I warmed to it and got quite attached to her accent. The (fictional) story itself was heart-breaking, tragic but beautiful. Completely told from Alice’s perspective and her experiences in being diagnosed and then struggling with early onset Alzheimer’s. It’s recently come out as a film (and Julianne Moore won the best actress Oscar for her role) which is how I heard about it and it was actually nice to imagine her in my head as the character. I really recommend it, though it did leave me in tears during my commute to work! The only problem is I zipped through that book in less than a week…
Rant: I ran parkrun on Saturday at Netley Abbey and it was a ‘naked’ event. This didn’t mean throwing off your running gear with reckless abandon and running free (and cold…and, er, bouncy) but rather not running with a watch or running app. There was also a competition to guess your time.
Initially I thought I’d put down ten seconds faster than the week before (so 21:50ish) as an incentive to run speedy but then I woke up on Saturday morning not really feeling it and getting cold feet. I quickly changed my time to 24 minutes and decided to run an easier pace. But then I warmed up (or at least tried to, it was so cold!) and started regretting my new time – I felt quite good and fresh. This gave me a rubbish head space just before the start and I was neither here nor there on the pace ending up somewhere in the middle with just over 23 minutes as I wasn’t sure whether to push or not. Then on the final lap I got a horrendous stitch in my side which meant I had to completely stop and sort my breathing out. This has never happened to me before. Yes I’ve had stitches but never to the point they’re so painful I have to stop. And insult to injury (or stitch), because I put my watch in my pocket to record the run but still be ‘naked’, the satellites must have ski-whiffed or something because it didn’t get the whole run recorded despite running exactly the same route as always. Ho hum. Just a bit of a pants run really!
Rave: I’m absolutely stoked about being sent a pair of some very cool looking earphones from the technologically gifted guys at Jabra to review for the blog.
Sadly they’re not the heart rate monitoring ones (yes I know how amazing is that??) as they were out of stock but they’re still pretty damn funky. They’re the Sport Rox wireless ear phones. I’m going to be trying them out on my run tonight. The lack of long cable alone makes me happy 😀 A full review will be on its way soon.
Rant: This is minor but at 5.30am in the morning it’s pretty major to me. People who don’t put weights back.
I won’t lie, I’m a bit neurotic and OCD when it comes to my strength training. I have certain weight dumbbells for different things (like single leg squats, Russian twists or whatever). But it really grinds my gears (Family Guy anyone…?) when people just remove them and then leave them all over the gym. My gym is a pretty big place and I hate having to walk all around searching for a single dumbbell. Just use them and then put them back in the same place!?
Rave: Even if he’s thrown up everywhere in the kitchen (*sighs* well that was a fun morning last week) I still can’t get angry at Alfie for long. I’d never get angry at him being sick of course, but tugging my arm out of its socket on a walk when he spies a cat doesn’t make me too happy!
It’s that “one up, one down” ear thing that always makes me smile. I like to think it’s his pensive look.
What’s grinding your gears this week?
What’s making you happy?
Do you listen to audio books? Do you read a lot?
