God, I love sport!

The atmosphere in The Silver Surfer's house continues...

Well, it is a slightly better weekend this weekend. Grimsby (aka 'The Mighty Mariners') have won 3 in a row and move out of relegation places for the first time in weeks. I can hardly contain myself and indulge in a hopefully not premature medicinal tincture. Needless to say by Sunday normal service was resumed at The Silver Surfer's house. My eldest was still getting the 'deaf and dumb breakfast treatment' for omitting a Mother's Day present the previous week (the fact I’d skived off on a 3 hour run was fortunately overlooked!)

Her misdemeanors paled into insignificance when our chocolate Labrador decided that the recently delivered load of horse manure destined for the vegetable plot was a tasty snack or something to roll in! I was then instructed to dig the remaining horse manure into the whole vegetable plot completely and hose the dog down before even daring to think about pulling on my running shoes! 3 hours of digging and a soapy smelly dog wash later I needed a fortifying cup of tea. I then realised I still had my long run to do. As the old adage says 'no pain, no gain' so slow change and off we trundled. My youngest daughter initially decided she wanted to avoid the 'atmosphere' and join me, however 1 mile on the mountain bike was enough and she preferred the 'atmosphere' leaving yours truly to plod on for another 17 miles on his own.

I note another blogger will discuss recovery soon but we mustn’t forget even pacing for such distances. It is also helpful to assess the effort expended becuase if you 'red line' it you won’t be going anywhere! The posh way to do it is one of those clever 'Garmin' things. However they can be in the order of £400 for a super-duper version including distance covered, heart rate, cadence if on a bike, downloadable analysis etc. (though they are brilliant for personal usage).

Next, monitoring heart rate during exercise. Much cheaper but you need to do some simple maths to work out your training zones. I have an “idiots guide” if anyone wants it via Ed. Effectively this will help ensure quality training and avoid just “plodding” for plodding sake. Hence I didn’t feel too bad when I spat my dummy out and did that 10k recently as I still had some speed in my legs (completed at a smidgen over 7 min/mile pace)

The final and most entertaining way to asses pace and effort is to run and see if a) you can sing b) you can talk sentences c) you can talk words d) nothing, eyes on stalks e) blue/purple collapsed in heap at side of road. Obviously the running and singing version is close to the speed we will need in June...!

Possibly in better news, spring is here and the summer racing bike was dusted down, polished and serviced prior to the first 'duathlon' of the year (a run, bike, run combination event) The best bit is the last run off the bike, when your legs want to go in circles rather than running forward. The feeling is a bit like watching Mr L Majors running in the 6 Million Dollar Man series of years ago, oops showing my age now! The only thing is I don’t run at 60 mph, its just my legs feel like it, as they are completely 'wibble'!

God, I love sport.