and so it begins…

One of the pleasures of an organised modern life is the ability to measure one’s progress.  This is a ‘feature’ of education, work, and pleasure activities, although I used that latter phrase reservedly.  I’ve just completed the first block of training, and the first week of block 2.  I’m struggling to measure the ‘progress’, at least in any useful terms like feeling ‘better’ about myself, fitter, or leaner.  I mostly just feel tired.  And that’s when I don’t feel absolutely fucked, like I did on Saturday.  A particular peril of being a semi serious runner is that one recalls races undertaken in the past, with rather more clarity than one recalls the training. So it was that I attempted to run a 15k cross country, with hills, and lots of mud, on the back of a late-ish Friday night out and no supper.  Suffice to say that my legs started to protest around the 9k mark, and by 12k I had to stop and walk a few times.  The encouragement from the mostly older men who trundled past was as depressing as being overtaken by one of my fellow club members, who I’d last seen shortly after the start.

As for the IM training, Block 2 has kicked off with a significant uptick in effort,  and a sneaky 50% increase in repetitions in the gym work.  I had to dig rather deeper into my energy reserves than I was expecting, and made extensive use of the more motivating tunes on my ipod (thanks UKF Drum & Bass!)  The one upside is I have another week of ‘cross-training’ (aka skiing) to look forward to, although I suspect I’ll have to swap out an ‘easy’ week, rather than a ‘hard’ week, to compensate.