Resistance Training???

Just an easy run up to Two Lads and back with Ruby this morning as a first test for the shoes I'm trialing for Inov8.  I'm going to be wearing them for an 18 miler tomorrow so wanted to make sure they are comfortable enough first.  They are so job's a good un!

On the way back down from Two Lads, Ruby had slowed so much that I felt like I was doing some resistance training.  It was as though I had a tyre attached to my be a rope which I had to drag along.  For such a small dog, she's pretty damn strong!

Total distance - 3 miles 

Locked Out!

Tonight I drove over to Horrobin Lane for what can loosely be described as a speed session.  The reason I say loosely is because my heart wasn't in it tonight.  My quads are still sore from Tuesday and I'm trying to save myself for Coope's Dozen on Saturday and have to run in the morning and go to spin at altitude tomorrow evening so I didn't want to wear myself out too much tonight.

I warmed up for just over a mile and then did three sets of one mile reps at a quick-ish pace, then cooled down until I reached 6 miles.

Splits:

Mile 1 - 7.44
Mile 2 - 7.33
Mile 3 - 7.32

I drove home feeling like I'd actually had a pretty good workout and was looking forward to settling down for tea and chilling out.

When I got there, however, my key didn't seem to want to go into the lock.  I tried for ages, knowing full well what had happened but hoping I was wrong.  Duncan had gone out on his bike through the garage and had locked the front door from the inside and left the key in it!  After wandering around the back to see if there was anyway I could get in, I gave up and got back in the car as, by now, I was getting quite cold having not taken any top layers out with me.  I decided to drive up to George's Lane to see if I could see Duncan out on his bike anyway.

Good luck was on my side as I saw him and Barry crossing the road by the Jolly Crofters so I flagged them down and got the key.

Flippin' idiot!!!

Total distance - 6 miles

Inov8 Shoe Testing – Red Screes

Finally my big feet have come in handy.  Usually I hate the fact that I look like a golf club and that when I see a lovely pair of dainty shoes on a shelf and ask for them in my size, the shoe which is brought out looks like it was made for a drag queen, however today they have made me a very happy girl.  I was selected by Inov8, thanks to Adrian Hope, to go to the Lakes for a day and do some shoe testing but to get on this trial you needed to have size 8 feet.  I am a size 7 to 8 depending on the shoe but as my X-Talons are an 8, as are my Mudclaws, I asked if I could be included on the test and I was fortunate to get through.

I drove up to the Inov8 offices in Staveley and met Adrian and Albert there, along with all the other staff and shoe testers.  There were eight of us testing shoes altogether and I was mortified when I was told that before we went out, we would all have our feet measured for scientific accuracy of the testing.  My feet are a disgrace!  There’s the odd black toenail, a weird bloody blistery type thing under a big toenail, not to mention the week old blister plaster on the bone at the base of my big toe, which is now all black round the edges (the plaster, not the toe) and flapping about the place.  Yuk!  My feet measured at size 7.75 for the right foot and 7.5 for the left.  I don't think a single person there measured at dead on an 8 which was quite surprising given that we all wore size 8 Inov8 shoes, including the only other girl on the test, Charlotte, whose feet measured at a size 10!  

After the embarrassment of the measurement exercise, we all got taken up to the car park at the top of the Kirkstone Pass.  As usual at the Kirkstone Pass, the clag was down and it was raining.  A course was flagged out taking us part way up Red Screes along a rocky path and then we had to turn off the path for a short grassy loop before coming back down again on a grassy slope by the side of the rocky path, although you could go down the path itself if you so chose but it was incredibly slippery so nobody opted for that route.  As evidenced by my Strava trace, I appeared to go down a different way almost every time.  

We had eleven pairs of shoes to test in total, so that would mean eleven times of running up and down the hill.  They were a mixture of Inov8 shoes and other brands, for example La Sportiva, Salomon and Asics.   We had to answer some feedback questions about comfort, fit, appearance, etc. before we ran in them, then answer the same questions, plus extra ones, i.e. grip, performance, etc. when we came back from the run.  We also had some jackets to test which were all really nice and flattering.

The first pair of shoes I wore, in my opinion, had poor grip (not Inov8 shoes I feel I must add!) and my feet rolled inside them.  This resulted in me slipping… a LOT and so I really lost my confidence on the descent.  The next pair were far better though but I was still quite tentative after the amount of times I slipped on the first loop.  I tensed up every time I put my foot down on a rock because I was scared it was just going to slide out from under me.  I was running like a big girl! 

After testing five pairs, it was time for a break and so we all went over to the pub for lunch.  I opted for soup and a roll because I didn’t like the thought of running straight after eating a heavy meal but I got huge food envy when others' meals arrived, particularly the curries people were having.  They looked delicious and I was still really hungry after my soup.  How people can eat all that and still run comfortably though I don’t know.  I would need a couple of hours for it to go down. 

I’m sure that between the time we went into the pub and the time we came out, the temperature had dropped a few degrees, it felt freezing!  My teeth were chattering away and I couldn’t wait to start running again to get warm. 

One of the shoes I tried on this afternoon was the most comfortable shoe of the lot.  It fitted really well and felt lovely.  If I had tried this shoe on in a shop I would have bought it.  Good job that didn’t happen!  Whilst it was fine going up the hill, I absolutely hated it coming back down.  My ankle was going over left right and centre and I ended up pretty much walking down for fear of breaking my ankle.  Just goes to show that a shoe you think will be great can turn out to not be suitable at all.  

Very soon I was on my last pair.  By now I was so tired that I didn’t even bother trying to run any of the up, I just walked the whole thing, save for a couple of flatish bits.  I was quite gutted when it was all over though as I’d really enjoyed myself, as had everybody else.  Hopefully the guys at Inov8 will have got some useful feedback from it too.

The only thing I would change about the whole day is that I wish I’d worn a different pair of shoes on my first test.  Because I had slipped so much in the ones I had on, it knocked my confidence and I was really tentative coming downhill for the whole test.  I can be a bit wimpy coming downhill sometimes, depending on the terrain.  A lot of you know that I’m a pretty quick descender on the hills near us, particularly the Pike for example, but the reason for this is that I don’t really have any fear.  If I fall coming off the Pike, it’s nice and grassy so is unlikely to hurt much but the terrain we were on today meant that a fall could be pretty painful.  So basically, I’m a wimp, it’s just that I hide it well when running on the hills near us but get me onto a ‘proper’ hill and the cowardice shines through.

HUGE thanks to all the guys at Inov8, particularly Adrian, for an amazing day out and thanks for lunch and all the goodies!  

Photo taken from Inov8 Facebook page

Total distance – 7.1 miles

Struggling!

On the training calendar today was a 14 mile road run, comprising of 5.5 miles ‘fast’ followed by 8.5 miles ‘comfortable’.  All I can say is that NONE of it was comfortable.  I was struggling.

The first 5.5 seemed to take forever to get through.  I ran from home, along Lever Park Avenue and out past the Millstone towards Adlington.  I then carried on along all the way to where the road meets the A6 and then turned back on myself along the A6.  The 5.5 miles ended just as I had passed back through Adlington and was climbing the small hill just before the farmland before the Cherry Tree pub.  I was so relieved when that initial 5.5 miles had passed thinking that the next 8.5 would be really easy but it wasn’t.  I was really tired.  Maybe it was the tough spin class last night, coupled with the half bottle of wine?  Even my energy gels weren’t helping and I was struggling just to keep up a nine minute mile pace.  The time was dragging so much.  Why is it that 14 miles on the fells, even though it takes longer than on the road, seems to go much faster?  The answer to that is obvious – because it’s much more fun!!!! 

I carried on along the A6, turning off in Westhoughton onto Wingates Lane and heading towards the Middlebrook.  I’m ashamed to say that when I was running around the Middlebrook, I actually stopped to ring Duncan to see if he would be on his way home from work soon and could pick me up because I couldn’t bear the thought of running that last two miles home.  I was struggling to hold back the tears at this point.  Pathetic as that may sound, I was just really upset at the thought of being defeated by such an easy run.  I didn’t understand why I was finding it so difficult, spin class or not.  How can I expect to run 26.2 miles in under four hours if I can’t run 14 at that pace?  Duncan told me that he wouldn’t be finishing work for a while and that I should pull myself together and man up and just get home so I did, albeit at snail’s pace. 

It was awful and I spent that last two miles thinking about whether I should just pull out of the race altogether.  It wasn’t until I got home that I started thinking about how detrimental the spin class could have been because all the other regulars there have said that they feel really lethargic and energyless the next day.  Nadine won’t do spin on a Friday anymore because it’s so detrimental to her weight session on a Saturday morning so maybe I should just give myself a break?

Total distance – 14 miles

Jog to the Barn

As the title says, today’s run was just an easy jog to the barn and back with Ruby.  This used to be my staple easy short run but I haven’t done it in a long while.  Nothing of interest to report today though.

Total distance – 3 miles

Run to Limbrick

I wasn't looking forward to today's session.  I'm now in the 'going further' stage of my training plan (the last stage was 'getting faster') and the first session in this phase was an 8.5 mile 'fast' session.  The goal pace for the session was 8.21 to 8.48 minute mile and I'm sad to say I didn't quite make it, managing an 8.58 pace overall.  However, it's not all doom and gloom because most of my miles were within the specified pace.  The reason the overall pace was slow is because 1) mile 5 involved a big hill that took me completely by surprise and it slowed my average pace right down (that mile took just over 10 minutes) and 2) my last mile and a half through Rivington were really hard work and I was getting incredibly tired by this point.  All other miles were really good and broken down as follows:

Mile 1 - 8.38
Mile 2 - 8.40
Mile 3 - 8.54
Mile 4 - 8.10
Mile 5 - 10.07
Mile 6 - 8.43
Mile 7 - 8.40
Mile 8 - 9.29
Last half mile - 9.44

The last half mile is really bad because I actually stopped dead for about 20-30 seconds trying to stop myself from throwing up.

The route I took was through Rivington, along Horrobin Lane to the top then turning right and following the road into Limbrick.  I then turned right after the Black Horse in Limbrick and followed the road back to the Yew Tree.  The bit after the Black Horse was the bit with the big hill that I hadn't bargained for when I chose this route which I had thought was pretty flat.  From the Yew Tree, I ran along The Street, back into Rivington and then home by the side of the reservoir.

Total distance - 8.5 miles (+ short warm up and cool down, approx 1 mile altogether) 

Going to be a Shoe Tester!

I couldn't believe my luck today when I received an e-mail from Adrian Hope telling me that I had been chosen to take part in the Inov8 shoe testing next week.  I never get picked for anything so was really over the moon.  Really looking forward to it, just hope the weather is good.

Today was just a three mile easy run with Ruby.  My default three mile run with Ruby now is up to Two Lads which is the only place I can think of where I can let her off the lead for a decent length of time.  Nothing to report really on the run, other than that I was feeling pretty good running up to Two Lads and got my second fastest time on Strava for it.


Total distance - 3 miles