Mixing It Up

See this photo?  Yep, that's me - actually RUNNING at Sandgate parkrun!

My wonderful parkrun, where I have spent every Saturday morning for the past 41 weeks (except 3, and in each case I was visiting a different parkrun).

My last run here was 11th May - that's craziness!  First it was marathon training, during which I did almost every long run on a Saturday afternoon, meaning I wanted to save my energy in the morning.  Then it was injury, which saw me out for practically 12 weeks.

But I'm back, baby!  The first thing I noticed was how much our event has grown in that time!  Of course, I've seen the numbers on paper, but it was not until I rounded the first bend that I realised just how many runners it is!  We had 233 last weekend, which was a great number considering the Bridge to Brisbane was the next day, and plenty of runners would be saving themselves for that.

I didn't expect a great time.  I'd run pram-free at Southbank the week before in 26:21.  This time I had both kids in the pram...and taking everything into consideration, I was pretty happy with 27:06.  My pram PB however, is 23:52, so I've still got a lot of fitness to regain.

Speaking of which, this week I joined a gym!  Well, kind of - they had a special deal to try out the bootcamps for a month, so I'm seeing how I go fitting it in with work hours & kids etc.  It's through Positive Existence Personal Training and so far I love it!  Okay, I've only been to one session, but boy am I feeling the muscle soreness now.  I really feel I need to tone up a bit, lose a couple of kilos that've crept back on and just give my overall fitness a bit of a kickstart, since I'm still not running more than 6km at a time.

I feel like 2 sessions of a bootcamp a week is just what I need.  I'm also backing it up with smart food choices and am doing my best to stick to real/whole foods for this month - nothing processed, no crap, nothing too sugary or fatty - just simple, fresh, healthy fuel.  I'm also doing a couple of coffee-free days a week.  I'm feeling so good for it already!

The running is going well - I'm just sticking to 3 a week at the moment, of about 5-6km each.  The killer this week has been a really strong headwind on my first 2.5kms.  It's sooo hard pushing the pram into such strong wind!  But I just dig in, knowing how easy the run home will be with the tail wind!

Yesterday, I'd decided I'd run this afternoon and do a couple of pram hills as well.  But I was feeling pretty sore from last night's bootcamp and a bit low on energy.  So here's what I did...put on my marathon finisher's t-shirt and went out and ran!  It's like that shirt says to me "you ran a marathon, you can do anything!"  And sure enough, I had a good, solid run - a bit of niggling pain in my shins, but I just focussed on technique and it went away.  The hills almost killed me - that was tough (and I only did 2!)

It was also nice to break up the run with a long play at the playground with the kids.  It's a great bribe to keep them behaving in the pram while I'm running!  Their new game is to shout and wave at people who walk past us, so we always get lots of smiles & laughs, which can make a tough run a lot more tolerable.

I'll be back to Event Directing at parkrun this week, but look forward to seeing my time next week, after a couple of weeks of solid running plus the addition of the bootcamp to my regime.  That PB better watch its back!