I do love to be beside the seaside....

I had a trip to the seaside today. My (temporary) unemployment has gifted me a menagerie of opportunities to do stuff that I never really have time to do, like go and spend the day with my Grandparents.

They live in a lovely town called Whitstable (the home of Janet Street-Porter) and I getting some sea air in the lungs is always a good feeling. After a lovely pub lunch and an afternoon of watching Ascot (did I mention how awesome unemployment is?) I set off on a run. I planned to do 5 miles, but this was cut short because the searing pain in my right calf hadn't disappeared after 3.5 miles. I'm thinking a rest from running is needed until after the weekend; some swimming and upper body training will give my calf a chance to rest and the running can begin once again next week.

Although my calf hurt quite a bit, I was pleased with my run; averaging 8:15 min/mi over varying terrain of road, busy highstreet and beach. Tomorrow will be a fun day with a bit of golf in the morning, an upper body gym session in the afternoon and speed dating in the evening. It may be a late blog, but it will definitely hopefully be worth reading.

Couldn't hit a barn door....

There are a few times in professional football when you watch and think "my nan could've scored that!" but when watching me play tonight you would've been forgiven for thinking "wow, you should really quit playing football".

Don't get me wrong, I don't think of myself as the new Ronny Rosenthal but I'm definitely not an awful player. However, tonight I couldn't hit a barn door with a Tactical Nuclear Penguin.

However, I did manage to run around a lot, I actually managed to score two goals (out of about ten attempts) and we won the game 5-4, so overall it wasn't that bad it was just embarassing.

Interval

in·ter·val/ˈintərvəl/Noun

1. An intervening time or space.

2. A pause; a break in activity.

My new watch has a setting on it to take you through an interval training workout, so I put that through it's paces today. Inspired by a conversation I had a few days ago, when I thought of an interval I somehow thought of getting an Albatross during my interval running. Unfortunatly, that didn't happen and instead of finding a large, feathered snack in my interval I had a rapid heart beat and large beads of sweat flowing from my head.

It was a good run though and I even hit 5:30 minute miles at one point. I managed it for 400 metres, so I won't be doing 5 minute miles any time soon, but I still enjoyed it.

It had to happen sometime...

There comes a time in every runners "career" that this will happen. I was hoping this wouldn't happen to me yet but today it happened. I went running in the rain.

After my bad time swimming yesterday, I felt like I needed to make up for it today with my running. I was looking forward to this because I could expel some demons and try out my new GPS watch.
While not being the easiest watch to configure (I even had to read the owner's manual!) it was a breeze to use once it was setup. My watch was ready for the run, my mind was ready but unfortuneatly the weather wasn't ready to let me enjoy it. I opened the front door to torrential rain, black clouds and generally unwelcoming streets. I almost delayed the run to see if the rain stopped, but I knew that if I did that, I would delay it until tomorrow so after a quick change into a long sleeve top, I set out on what was my virgin rain run.

With the rain beating down and my watch GPS-ing, it took longer than usual to settle into a rhytm. I can usually settle into a rythm after about 1.5 miles but today took 3 miles to really relax. 3 miles! I only planned to do 4 miles so it was a tough one, but one I was quite proud of. It was quite pacy too with a short sprint to finish the run.

One of the good things about my new watch (yes, I will be mentioning my watch plenty of times over the next week as I use all of the features and I make no apologies :) ) is that I will upload the results to the Garmin Connect website and allow me to embed those in some sort of blog or website, such as this one...

Great East Swim - 38:38

Firstly, apologies for not blogging last night, I didn't get in from the Great East Swim until 00:25! Anyway, onto the more interesting stuff...

I was hoping to blog about how good the swim was and how I loved it so much that I can't wait for the next one, but unfortunately it didn't go down like that. I was kind of nervous about it in the first place so that probably didn't help but I thought that would just go away once I got in the water. On the contrary, the combination of shock of cold water and being surrounded by people all trying to swim at the same time was a little too much for my anxiety and it all boiled over into my losing my breathing rhythm and generally forgetting how to swim.

Now, there are some situations where being scared and nervous are perfectly acceptable and could be forgiven. I don't see the Great East Swim as one of those situations, so I've made a list of reasons for and against the nervousness and I'm pretty sure there was no reason for it:

• Reasons to be scared:
• Visibility was poor
• There were lots of people all trying to swim at the same time
• A monster might rise from the deep and eat me (This really did cross my mind at one point)

• Reasons not to be scared:
• Visibility was poor, but I could still see enough to swim
• The other swimmers were trying to swim, not kill me
• The monsters were probably quite friendly

Apart from these irrational fears, the fact that I'm actually a very good swimmer should've been enough to get me through and then add to the fact that I used to be a lifeguard in my youth makes this a little more embarassing.

But given this whole thought process going through my head during the swim, I finished the course in less time than I was aiming for anyway and I've used the whole thing as a learning experience. I've got an Aquathlon coming up in two weeks and the Great London Swim in three weeks, so I'll look towards them as real opportunities to make amends for my horrible swim yesterday.

I'm soooooo hungover

I had some leaving drinks last night, which meant today was full of junk food and a general queasy feeling. I knew today would be a tough day to continue Juneathon so I managed to complete a quick mile run when I got home from work without throwing up and that's good enough for me. I really don't like running when I have a hangover, it just makes me feel really icky and sweating that much when I'm already dehydrated surely can't be good for you.

Now that I'm unemployeed for the next two weeks, this is where Juneathon can really kick in. With time to train properly, I can make quite an improvement in my fitness, all in time for Tough Guy in July. One thing that will help is the GPS watch that my old colleagues got me as a leaving present. I do love looking at various metrics so all the new metrics I can look at about my running will be like a little geeky dream. This geeky dream also comes with a big thanks to any old colleagues who read this blog.

I'm off to Ipswich for the Great East Swim tomorrow. This is going to be a unique challenge that I've never done before, so I'm really looking forward to that and hopefully I'll have a few pictures to show for it too.

Rise and shine... it's butt whooping time

After my achievements in the pool last night, I knew today was where my Juneathon might hit a brick wall. I'm out for my work leaving drinks tonight and out for lunch today, which means I'd have to get up in the morning and complete a run.

My alarm woke me up with a start at 6am so with a false sense of optimism in my step, I set out on my run in the hope that I'd be back in time for the train to work. The one thought that sprang to mind was CoolRunnings when they all bust into John Candy's room to wake him up for some early morning training. Early morning training would be so much better if I had John Candy to throw snowballs at on my morning run. One can only dream.
One a good note, I finshed my 1.6 mile run in a decent time and I'm showered, breakfasted and blogged in time for my train.