This picture summarises the condition of my brain right now...
The excuse of "being busy" doesn't really cut it for my blogging gap - I've had the time, I just haven't had enough mental energy to type a reasonable sentence.
In an effort to earn sufficient money to feed The Kid, I've taken on a bunch more work - a couple of new clients and two days a week in a workshop in the city. This is bringing in some much-needed top-up funding, but is stretching me way thin - almost transparent, in fact.
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| In a workshop with proper-sized machines! |
You may also notice a change to the blog header - given the mess since my achilles were playing up at the start of the year and the topsy-turvy last month or so, I've admitted to myself I'm not likely to be ready for a marathon in Perth in August, so I've re-evaluated and re-set the program. There's 20 weeks in the program, and I was looking for a suitable race. With IW in Berlin (and the Berlin marathon sold out almost immediately), I have an added incentive to make some bucks and have a go at the Cologne Marathon and get a little European holiday at the same time.
The Perth events will still get a look in for at least the half-marathons, and maybe the full if I am surviving the program that far along. I suspect it'll take me two or three marathons to find the speed I want. It'd be a hoot to run in Europe.
A bit of extra motivation has come recently from a new toy, and the return of speedwork to the program. The new toy is a Garmin 305 (borrowed from IW), which provides a good view of just how runs are going - it is great to re-educate my head and legs to recognise real race paces. An amazing little gadget - fiddling with the output graphs is good fun.
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| intervals graphing - pace and heartrate outputs (I chose one that looked fast!) |
IW is racing IronMan Texas as I write this - live updates are streaming through and they've just come out of the water. Immediately after the race, IW jumps on a plane and drops by for recovery in Perth. Thank God she's small - post-ironman origami in an airplane seat would be agony. Can't wait to have a training partner again!
Some interesting advances with the barefooting, too. I've figured out how to make it fast, but not yet fast enough. As a get close to 4min/k's, I start to get ragged and rough up hotspots on my feet quite quickly - twisting and toeing-off on takeoff. Consequently, IW is kindly bringing me a pair of saucony Kinvaras (see runblogger's review here) - these are a minimal rop racing shoe, which should get me over that mental block of going hell for leather over any surface. The Barefoot forums continue to support the direction that I'll get as fast as I like if I persist, but I need to go a bunch faster yet (I want to get down to consistent 3:20min/km!). To do this, I can keep the midfoot float that I've grown to love, but with the great stretch that legs like mine allow.
Let the experiment continue....
