4/14/10

Wednesday’s Training – Am: 70 mins easy Pm: 45 mins easy

Mileage – 16.5 Miles

The difference between today and yesterday was huge. I slept right through the night again and woke up feeling pretty good. I sat and had some coffee and a PowerBar before heading out the door and I knew as soon as my foot hit the pavement that it wasn’t going to be as bad as yesterday. I felt so much better and was able to enjoy my run this time. 7 years ago, when I was at university in Stirling, AC had taken me on a run around Edinburgh that led us along a canal trail so I decided to try and find that. I found it almost right away as I knew the trail popped out near where his sister’s apartment was but finding my way back along it was going to be tough as there are a bunch of turn offs and roads to cross. After about 4 miles on a tiny trail, I hit the canal and it was a good feeling. I was heading towards the city so I had a great view of the castle and Arthur’s Seat. I also passed a pub that had a cracking name – The Kilted Pig! The trail ending up spitting me out right downtown so I did a lap of The Meadows and then headed back to the apartment. After some drills, stretching and breakfast, I headed up to the restaurant and spent a little time just drinking coffee and doing some stuff on the computer. Julie called me also so it was really good to hear her voice and to know that she is doing well. After a couple of hours AC mentioned something about a run so I pounced on this and told him to we should do one together for old times sake. He was a bit nervous as he hasn’t run much since his competitive days but it wasn’t too hard to convince him. We went back to the apartment and got changed and then headed over to do 2 laps of The Meadows and back. A nice easy 6 miles later and we were happy! AC was very surprised that he had lasted as long as that as the longest he’d done recently was 25 minutes. After standing outside and chatting for a little while, we headed in, got showers and then headed back up to the restaurant. Right away I got stuck into a burrito as I was getting hungry and that filled me up for a while. I had been texting my old house mate and good friend (and Olympic 110m hurdler), Allan Scott during the day and he met me at the restaurant and we sat at talked for 3 hours or so at one of the window tables and caught up on all our news as we hadn’t seen each other since the Olympics. We both actually stayed a day later than everyone in Beijing and spent the rest of our money on a huge meal at a restaurant in the city. The restaurant was closing up after 9pm so Allan got the bus back to his apartment and AC and I went back to his sister’s and relaxed for a little while before I headed to bed at midnight. I didn’t go to sleep until 1 am but that was fine as I had some reading material. I’m hoping that come next week, I wont have any problem getting to sleep by 10pm so I think bringing the time I go to sleep back one hour each night should be a good strategy.