Thursday - Winter is here!

It was cold - 5 degrees celcius. I'm no longer going to post the whole route here. Just follow the link to the run

Relaxed wednesday

Took an easy 3km walk around the neighborhood with the jacks. Feeling a slight niggle in the right hip and decided on a rest day.

Easy Tuesday

It's pretty damn cold in Johannesburg at the moment. My car said 2 degrees celsius. There is no such thing as bad weather only bad gear - yeah right! tell that to the tip of my nose and my ear lobes.

Back to the 36

Ok so I'm back on track with the 36 day challenge. I took the one day off but I know how to avoid that. Come friday I'm going to run in the morning. That way I can still go out for afternoon drinks on Friday. This evenings run was at an easy recovery pace. Have I mentioned yet that I am absolutely loving my running at the moment.
 

Jumping in the City

Sunday I ran the Turbovite Jump City GP urbanathlon. This style event is absolutely awesome in concept unfortunately it didn't manage to live up to the marketing hype on the organisers web site. I was hoping for 10km of urban assault course. The route through Johannesburg and some of it's parking lots was pretty good. What was missing was any form of route marking, at all. Would it have been so difficult to mark the route? even just signposts at the turns. The marshaling at some of the key obstacles was non-existant. For instance - at race briefing we were told to collect a rubber band in a parking lot, 7 floors underground. We got there and there was no marshal, no rubber band and no clue as to what to do next. Some people heard this from those coming out and simply turned where they were. A further example was at another parking garage, we had to push car tires up some ramps and then return to the same point before continuing. The marshal at the bottom just said 'go to the top and them come back'. We ran 3 levels before running out of parking garage and returning. We were told at the finish by some other competitors that they'd only run one level. There were other examples of people complete inefficiencies on the course including blatant cheating where people just skipped entire sections of the course. Oh and the course distance was less than 8km's, not the advertised 10km. I hope the organisers take heed of all the problems and run the event better the next time. I'd also like them to take the obstacles a little more seriously. The obstacles en-route felt like tokens and wouldn't have challenged an average 10 year old child. I will do the event at least one more time because the idea of the course appeals to me.

DAy 12 (6/36) - AR club trail run

The weekly AR Club trail run is a wonderful start to the week.

Day 11 (5/36 Fail)

Left work late and hungry. Went out for pizza and red wine. I think I need to stick to running in the mornings.There is too much stuff to do in the evenings.

Day 10 (4/36)

Day 9 (3/36)

Day 8(2/36)

Day 7 - Rest day becomes 36 days of running

Today should have been a rest day. My training schedule says REST but my friend AdventureLisa is doing a 36 days of continuous running challenge and I decided to join her.

I will be running the days that are not on my official training program in VERY easy mode. In fact some of those days I may switch to riding my mountain bike or even swimming. So now the rest days (Monday and Friday) are easy or cross training days. At least until the end of the challenge.

Day 6 - Cross training on the couch

This should have been a cross training day. I spent it on the couch in front of the TV

Day 5 - Trail run (19 becomes 9)

I only ran half the scheduled distance here. No actual excuse. I was just lazy.
 

Day 4

Day 3

Day 2 - Setting Out

Phew - actually managed to get out the door.

Day 1 - Fail

I came across this wonderful piece of software that runs on my iPhone called Endomondo and I will be using it to track all my runs

The stupid this is that day 1 was a complete non-event. Life just got in the way

Setting a base

I've been running for some time now and it's been many years since I followed a formal training program. Recently I've fallen short of my own expectations and have decided that I might run better if I follow a formal(read rigid) training program.

I have a goal in mind and I have set my training program accordingly. My goal event is the Merrel Hobbit 100 scheduled for mid October. It's a 2 day event covering 100km of trail. It's an event I have wanted to do for a long time in an area of South Africa that is unique in it's beauty. J R Tolkien is purported to have derived the setting for The Hobbit from this area.

I will document ALL of my training in this blog. Both as a way of keeping myself honest and as a light for others who might not be as fast as they think they are, Or those runners who feel that their best years are behind them. This is for the bullets, ballies, ooms and tannies who love to run.

First we start with 8 weeks of base.

		Weeking Starting	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun
Building phase. Focus more volume(low heart rate), form , strength	1	07-May-12	Off	40 A	60 A	40 A	Off	19km A	40  X
	2	14-May-12	Off	40 A	65 A	45 A	Off	21km A	40 X
	3	21-May-12	Off	40 A	70 A	50 A	Off	21km A	40 X
	4	28-May-12	Off	40 A	30 A	30 A	Off	10km A	30 X
Building phase. Focus more volume(low heart rate), form , strength	5	04-Jun-12	Off	40 A	75 A	50 A	Off	24km A	40 X
	6	11-Jun-12	Off	50 A	80 A	50 A	Off	26km A	40 X
	7	18-Jun-12	Off	50 A	90 A	50 A	Off	26km A	40 X
	8	24-Jun-12	Off	30 A	45 A	30 A	Off	13Km A	40 X

A = 60 - 70 % of HR Max for me thats 130 - 142
X = Cross Train (paddle, swim,cycle, etc)

If you're paying attention you'll notice that this is not a 'starting from scratch' program. I have been running and training. In the last 6 months I have completed a number of half marathons, a 32km and a marathon.

The base phase is all about getting the body adapted to burning fat efficiently. So all runs are at a nice conversational pace.