Kicking butt with Ewen!

Thursday

This was track night and hot and dusty with temps still in their high 30s as the time came for the 3000m at 6pm. It was tough out there and my throat felt like sandpaper during and after the run. Needless to say I did not set any PBs or earth shattering times as I don't cope too well in the intense heat. However I was pleased to take part in three events.

Distance: 3000m (at 6pm)
Time taken: 15:34:62

Distance: 1500m (at 7.15pm)
Time taken: 7:26:36

5 lap spiral (approx 2.07km)
Time taken: 10:45
Handicap group: 32
Place: 26 (34 finishers)

Total distance for evening including warm-ups between events: 10km

Friday - rest day from running
6.15am - Body Balance class at gym including abs, stretching.

Saturday

7.30am - Run from Molonglo Reach. Met up with large group and ran together until Campbell Park where Jen, Andy and I followed Ewen in a different direction. We ran around the '11 bridges' from there along the Mt Ainslie track (great surface), past the War Memorial, Commonwealth Ave Bridge, through the Wetlands and back to Molonglo. Jen was struggling with stomach cramps and she and Andy walked/ran the last 4km. We did run very gently to keep them in sight.

Later we joined the main group and had a pleasant picnic morning tea by the water's edge watching the kayakers go past.

Total distance: 16.2km

Calories burned: 947

Time taken: 1:43:29

Average pace per km: 6:23

Sunday (today)

This morning I met up with Ewen at Parliament House at 9.30am for a drills and hills session. We followed the Peter Magill drills but this week only did two repeats of each instead of three, as Ewen planned hill repeats afterwards!

We ran a warm-up around PH to the shaded grass opposite Portrait Gallery and did 35 mins of drills as follows

3 x 50m strides followed by 2 each x 50m of schoolyard skipping, high skips, skip-kicks, flat-foot marching, high knees, butt kicks and carioca (with 50m of strides between sets). We then ran a 100m sprint along some flat grass before jogging back to a steep hill on the west side PH for our hill repeats. Here we ran 5 x 10 sec hill sprints with a full recovery between each sprint. This was tougher than it sounds as the hill was very steep but we made it to the top and jogged back down for our recovery before the repeat.

After this we ran a gentle jog back to PH before driving to a nice spot by the lake for a coffee and after lingering too long and checking out the styles of passing runners we ended up staying long enough to buy a sandwich and turning it into lunch!

We were very lucky today as there was complete cloud cover and it was comfortable running even at that time of day. As I write this the wind has picked up and the temp has cooled. We may be in for a temporary cool change!

Total distance: 8.2km
Total distance for week: 73km