Monday, May 26, 2008

Busy Birthday Weekend!

strewth, Mr B and Rae
Peter and Marg









Mark and Barb. Jenny, speedygeoff and Rachelle

On Thursday our training group all went out to dinner instead of training at Dickson, to celebrate all things running and speedygeoff's 60th birthday. I will post some more photos over the next few days. It was a great night. On Friday morning I still rose early to attend my RPM class - another tough session although that was two days without running. However I more than made up for it over the weekend.

On Saturday, despite it being my birthday, I had scheduled in a three hour run so no sleeping in for me as I had a big day planned. Thus it was that I was out there running on a glorious Autumn morning enjoying the music on my ipod and actually loving running on my birthday. It was almost a religious experience; I guess they call it a runners' high as I ran past Molonglo Reach in the absolute peace and past Canberra's beautiful icons by the lake. There were lots of people out there enjoying the lovely day and the still water. I ran from home past Molonglo over the bridge towards Fyshwick and at the 1hour 30min point I turned and retraced my steps arriving home in exactly 3 hours at which point my legs were burning and I stood in the shower running icy cold water on my legs alternating with hot. It took a long time for the pain to go.

Total distance: 30.35km
Time taken: 3hours
Average pace per km: 5:55
Fastest km: 5:37
Calories burned: 1778 (that's a relief cos I consumed a few later!)
After my shower it was off to lunch with Mr B followed by the movies with my girls - fun!

Sunday - Masters' Run
Yes, we are soon to officially change our name from ACT Veterans Athletics to ACT Masters - woo hoo! It's been a long time coming but it will be so good.
This morning there was still no sleep-in as Mr B took part in a duathlon and I took part in the monthly handicap run, this time at Oakey Hill in the south of Canberra. The name of the run says it all really. Anything with "hill" or "Mt" in the name is a dead give-away! Yes, it was hilly and there was one particularly long hill which was a struggle but I was surprised at how good I felt after yesterday's run. It was tough but I do like the off-road hills so in spite of myself I did enjoy the event.
Distance: 7.5km
Time taken: 42:54 (almost 2mins faster than last year)
Best km: 5:02
Average pace per km: 5.43
Calories burned: 444
Handicap Group: 22
Place: 29th (out of 115 finishers in the long course)
Later I met up with a couple of girlfriends for a leisurely lunch and more celebrations. In the evening we bought Italian takeaways with all the family and enjoyed the birthday cake later! It was a lovely weekend.

Monday - Parliament House training
This morning I returned to the gym for another RPM class then after work it was a speed session at PH with speedygeoff. After the warm-up of a couple of loops of PH we ran the main session of 12 x (1min fast/1min slow) before another loop of PH for a cool down.
Total distance: 10km
Calories burned: 582

Tomorrow I have a strength/upper body session scheduled at the gym.

2 comments:

  1. Happy birthday gorgeous!

    Sounds like you had a wonderful weekend. If you ask me, going out to dinner rather than to training is a brillant idea :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. 2 minutes faster! Thanks for being so speedy - I won my bet :)

    Did you run that far on your birthday so Mr B had time to bake the cake?

    ReplyDelete