Pre Trailwalker

This weekend sees me as one third of the support crew for TrailWalker, a mad 100km walk across the South Downs, and my lounge is full of all sorts of kit and mallarkey. Yet I still bet I manage to forget something crucial!

Yesterday I went to the gym and swum 2000m. Although there was supposed to be a family swim time, it kept pretty quiet until the last ten lengths, and the swim went exceptionally well. I even did a times 400m, which came in at 6:56, which is amazingly quick considering I didn't feel that I was swimming particularly well. I did wonder whether I was two lengths short, but even so that's still around a time of 7:30. I absolutely must go to the Rainbow which I know is 25m, if I can do a similar time there then perhaps I'll believe that the gym pool really is 20m!

This morning I went out on a run. More base training, and once again, the first three miles went beautifully, but then, as usuall, after around half an hour, the HR crept up, and was hard to keep down. Here's the stats:

Mile four isn't too bad, but then there's a massive slip to a pace of outside eleven minute miling. Not good! I had to take reguklar walk breaks at this stage, and this continued, even on what was fairly flat bits. The route was basically the Nonsuch Park six, but I added on a few extra loops round the back of Stoneleigh. Must try and remember it and do it again for comparison.

My theory is that somewhere shortly after hitting mile three, I switch over to burning more fat, and that's when my body starts to struggle, hence the HR goes up quite dramatically. My planned solution is thus to do more long runs - in the hope that I can train my body to cope with this and be better at fat burning.

At the moment, whatever's going wrong is really getting me down - I like to run freely, not having to stop because a HR monitor is nagging me too, or at a slow shuffle. I'm developing a nasty ache in the ball of my right foot, and while it doesn't go completely, I'm convinced it isn't as bad at a higher pace.

Having said that - the figures for the first three miles are a fair bit better than for the last run, so at least that's good - it's after the three mile point that it all seems to go to pot :o(