Another Sunday, Another Long Run

Yep, the next long run, done! 29km (18mile) was on the training plan ... and I *think* we ran that far. I'm a stick to the plan, stick to map girl ... Deirdre isn't! We are a good combination, I keep her more focussed, she keeps me more relaxed and out of my comfort zone.

So, I had the course all mapped out, we get to Waikanae and Deirdre is "how about we run along the beach", well why not? So off we go ... I should run along there more often, it was a nice running the tide was out, the sand was hard, and I think it's better for your legs than the pounding on the roads (see, she drags me out of my comfort zone, in a good way!). We stopped at the toilets at the other end of Waikanae Beach, and I don't know what I did, but my ipod kept timing the run, but not measuring it ... so it was 8.5km at the toilets - we ran for what we thought was about 5km up the beach, to where we thought main the Peka Peka road was, had a gel and a drink, I realised the ipod wasn't working properly so restarted it. Got back to the stream/toilets (well, the stream wasn't the toilet, the toilet was at the top of the stream, that we had to walk up and cross so we didn't get our feet wet!), checked my ipod - 3.5km, whoops not quite the 5k we thought! ... that's okay, numbers are my thing - 8.5km + the 3.5km my ipod missed = 12km ... and we should have run about 13km up to Peka Peka, to make the return route right to get to 29km - whoops!

Anyway, off we went, up the road towards Statehighway One, took a wee detour around a block to try and add the extra km's, got to the Highway Bridge by the river and we were at 21km ... with about 7km left going the route we planned, and me being slightly obsessive wasn't wanting to do 28, 29 was on the programme! So as we ran down the side of the river we decided to run the long way home after we reached the end of the river which would add extra, but we'd walk the last half km or so to ease the muscles. Which we did, although we stopped too early. I mapped the route later and it was actually 29.5km including the walk - so I dunno whether we actually "ran" the whole 29, it might have been more like 28.5 ... but, really, come on Lisa, that doesn't matter - it was the Sunday long run done, and it was fun run with lots of variety - road, trail, beach, road, trail, road :)

After my lovely heel blister on Saturday with my new shoes and my sore left foot, I decided the older shoes would be a wiser option. I went to the pharmacy and asked about really good band-aids for the blister and she suggested that I actually use strapping tape and tape around the blister and foot, that way it wouldn't move like a plaster probably would. So I went with that suggestion and it worked like a dream! Never felt the blister at all and the strapping stayed put, didn't move or come off at all AND by total accident found that my foot sat in my shoe so much better, the strapping stopped my foot from sliding up and down ... so even without the blister I'm tempted to strap the foot anyway. I definitely will until the blister heals! Left foot that I was worried I'd done damage to was no problem either, and the pain is all gone - yay!

Today is a cross training day, and usually I'd have delivering to do on my bike, but I haven't got any to do (well, I have but only a small lot that I know will combine with tomorrows so no point in doing them today). So after much humming and hahhhhing, I've decided to do a mini-duathalon later on today - I'm doing a fun duathalon on Sunday so need to do a wee practice run of biking then running, so I'll map out 15km to bike and then I'll run 5k ... the 5k isn't quite the no-running, cross training ... but I'll take it easy :)

This week is a total "off training plan" week - it is the "step down" week in training, so I thought I'd take advantage and do the fun duathalon, just because I want to ... and I could juggle things around and make it work. I'm supposed to run 21km on the Sunday, which I was going to do on Friday, then rest on Saturday, then Duathalon on Sunday. Deirdre does a wicked hill run that she's been wanting me to do with her for a while, I think its about 15km - up the Maungatooks, then up and around even further, so we're going to do that on Friday ... and with the hills it should pretty match up to an easy 21km. So this week -

Today (Monday) - bike 15km/run 5km
Tuesday - 8km Tempo (I'll see how the body feels for the tempo)
Wed - 13km (should be 8km, but I'll miss the 13km on Sat so swapping things around)
Thurs - Rest Day
Fri - Campbell Hill run (approx 15km)
Sat - Rest
Sun - Waikanae Duathalon - 2km run/15km bike/5km run

Then the week after we'd already planned to run the big 32km on Saturday because we are both busy on the Sunday, so I'll push my training programme forward a day for the week, so Monday will be straight into the usual Tuesday run. I think it looks like a pretty good plan - fitting in the "want to dos" without mucking the training programme around too much :)