I feel a bit like that guy in the photo. Okay, so I haven’t just had an Uzbekistani boxer try to punch my lights out, but he looks done in, and I feel a bit like that today too.
Training has gone to plan this week. I’ve done my three runs, and i’ve got a long run to do tomorrow. I’m in my third week of the running training plan, so this is a cut-back week. There isn’t much difference in the mileage compared to last week’s efforts, but it means I only need to pound out a 3-miler in the morning which is good.
Anyway, i’m happy with the way training is going, but I guess i’m just feeling a bit tired. This week was the first week i’ve felt like I couldn’t be arsed to do one of my short runs, but I went out and did it because I just have to, and I enjoyed it in the end. I know that i’ll likely miss a few sessions over the duration of the plan, possibly to illness or injury, but fingers crossed that won’t happen. Knowing that missing the odd session for such reasons may happen, has made me more determined to get the sessions in when there is no reason not to. I’m not allowing ‘CBA’ as a reason. Not right now anyway! When I was feeling a bit tired, I started reading some race reports from previous Big Sur marathon runners that I found on the web. It is definitely going to be a tough race, but that gave me the push I needed to keep with the training. Got to make hay while the sun shines, as they say, whoever ‘they’ are (probably farmers).
Training is going well, eating less so. I think the reason i’m a bit more tired this week is that i’ve had real carb cravings, so i’ve been eating a lot of gluten-free carbs like GF bread, GF pizza (bad Lee, I know!!) and some other undesirable foods. However, they’ve not given me the energy i’ve been craving – precisely the opposite. I’ve not been eating as many veggies as usual either, so that’s not helping. Anyway, this is getting sorted out – food has been bought for next week, meals will be planned out and no money taken to work so I can’t buy food I don’t need. I’ve done this before, and keep meaning to do it all the time, but i’ve been a bit more disorganised food wise, and a couple of days this week I had to buy lunch on the hoof, so I need to rein that in again.
So all this added up to the fact that I wasn’t exactly bouncing with energy when I turned up for my PT sesh today. We started off with some foam rolling of tight hip muscles (ow!!!) before doing some single leg squats then deadlifts. Last week I started on 40kg, quickly moved to 50Kg, did a few sets at that weight then moved up to 60kg. This week I tried to start at 60kg and I could barely get it off the ground. Of course initially I assumed the weights were superglued to the floor, but unfortunately not. The weight was stripped back, then slowly built back up, and I managed to do the 60kg in the end. My lack of energy was definitely a factor today. Next exercise was the push press, where you hold a barbell across the front of the shoulders, squat down then drive up through the legs and push the bar up overhead, until the arms are fully extended. That went okay – the sorest bit was my wrists; they’re not used to holding a bar like that! We were going to move on to kettlebell work, as we had in the previous session, but then my trainer said “actually, I have an idea…”.
He stripped a lot of the weight back off the barbell (to about 30ish kg I think) and said “lets do some short runs on the treadmill”.
“OMG”, I thought. “He’s going to make me run on the treadmill with the barbell :O “. I had visions of being catapulted off the back then crushed to death with the bar.
Thankfully, I was just being a complete idiot (…and not for the first time! I hear you all cry…), because all he wanted me to do was run 400m on the treadmill, then do a set of 12 reps of deadlifts, then repeat this three times. Phew! Head-crushing was avoided, although clearly I may have benefited from getting some sense knocked into me.
After that, we were finished, and I took myself, red-faced and sweating profusely, off to the shower to hose myself down. Success! I survived the second session.
Today was a good lesson though. While i’ve been following the training plan closely, i’ve also been getting tired (naturally), and by not eating well enough, I suffered more. Obviously this isn’t exactly rocket science – you need to eat right to workout properly – but I didn’t think it was going to have quite as much of an effect on my energy levels as it actually did. At least now I have a marker to work against.
So another week of training is almost at a close, just one run to do. Happy days 🙂
My Random Ramblings 