Training again

The days have been passing by slowly but it has become easier now that I am back training twice a day. I've only been getting 2 to 3 shifts a week at work so that has left me to entertain myself during the days and get things done that i had been putting off for a while. The one thing I am finding that I am able to do is sleep a lot more. I've never been a great sleeper even when I was running 150 miles during the week but since starting back running, I am finding that I can sleep 9 hours at night with a 1-2 hour nap in the afternoon. This is great as I always struggle to stay asleep when the sun comes up and the light starts poking through the blinds.

Last weeks training consisted of running 69 miles with 2 days running twice. I ran very easy all week and am ready to start hitting some good sessions again. On Monday I did a light workout of 10 laps of the track alternating between 100m hard and 100m easy. Yesterday I met the guys and we went for a run up Shultz Pass. I hadn't run these trails for a long time as they had been covered in snow and I have moved to the other side of town. It was nice to get back on these trails as I used to run them almost everyday. I almost didn't get out for my second run as I had been sitting around for a while and really didn't feel like getting out into strong winds. Luckily, Julie's workmate, Cariee, came round to run with Julie so I made myself put my shoes on and get out onto the trails. I actually felt fine as soon as I started running so the run went by pretty quickly. We all got back to the apartment around the same time and were greeted with the fantastic smell of the crock pot dinner that I had put on to cook at 8am. I had basically just thrown everything I could find in the kitchen in the pot and let it cook all day. A big hung of steak, navy beans, carrots, potatoes, loads of spices and some chilies rounded out the ingredients and luckily it turned out well. We ate this stew with a massive loaf of freshly baked bread and then relaxed in front of the TV and continued to get through season 4 of "It's always sunny in Philidelphia".

I was supposed to do a fartlek this morning but I wasn't feeling great for some reason so I just jogged for 30 mins and talked to Greg about what I should do. We decided upon doing it tomorrow up at Buffalo Park so I would just take the rest of the day easy. I am just going to run an easy 10 miles this evening through the trails. I have recently been running in full tracksuit as I was just reading about why the Kenyans do that so often. I could never understand why the Kenyans would do this but I have been reading "More Fire" by Toby Tanser (a follow up to the famous "Train Hard, Win Easy - The Kenyan Way") and the runners explain that if they are running in lots of clothes and being uncomfortable during the run, they will feel so much faster when they get to the start line of their race and they are wearing next to nothing. Doing this right now is ok as it is a bit chilly with the high winds so i'll see how I feel doing this during the summer when there is no wind and its nice and hot.

Our house is really coming along with the shingles being finished and the electrics all being wired throughout the house. They are about to put the dry wall in so Julie and I are going to wire the house for Surround sound as its fairly easy to do now that there are no wall in place. This will save a lot of time and money over doing it later down the line so we will be doing that tonight. They are anticipating that the house will be finished in a month or so and we are getting excited about moving in.

I'm hopefully going to get some video up on here soon. I was given a video camera when I made the Olympic team so I will hopefully get some nice footage of training and anything else that I find interesting. I will try and post some of the olympic videos that I just rediscovered also.