Continuing with my random training, I ended up doing a fair amount of high intensity work. After a very easy swim to recover from my 10K race the day before I hooked up with some work colleagues to go for a run in the fields out back. What they neglected to tell me until it was too late to turn back, was that they had a session of hill repeats in mind. After a short warm up, we drew a line in the sand with a stick and ran up a short, sharp hill and back, 9 times. What made it psychologically much easier was that we alternated easy, medium and fast climbs - the last of which left me gasping so much for breath that I could barely get back down the hill in time for the next (mercifully easy) one.
The fact is, I find high intensity workouts much more satisfying (and time efficient) than long, easy workouts. So I opted to do some interval training on the treadmill on Tuesday lunchtime. Without my industrial fan and home cinema it was harder than usual to complete and I had to back off a little on the last set of 1km. In fact, I had to take a bit of a break before attempting the 400m "sprints" (well, they are for me) and, by the time I had cooled off a little, the few running machines capable of going that fast were all occupied. Eventually I managed to secure one and felt good about having finished what I set out to do.
The spinning class on Thursday started to feel easier than the previous week when my back suffered from all the standing up on the pedals. Also, the music wasn't quite so grating (still pretty bad, I have to say).
I've never seen so many wild flowers / weeds (what's the technical difference?) on my route to work as on Friday. It has been so mild and rained so much this year (for Spain) that, now the sun is finally coming out, there are flowers blooming everywhere. By now the Little grass that manages to grow back is usually reduced to a dust bowl.
I took the weekend fairly easy, just doing an hour long run on Saturday. On Sunday, the local branch of the sports giant Decathlon had organized an outing by bike in Pozuelo. Rather like the "Festival de la bici" which I attended last year, it was very chaotic with several hundred meandering cyclists of all ages, trundling along behind a police car. This time we were the whole family plus a friend of my son's who had stayed over. It was a lot of fun, especially trying to avoid clashing with other bikes and running over any of those who had failed to avoid clashing. My only complaint is that, for one time that the roads are closed for bikes, why should we have to wait 5 minutes at every roundabout for the roads to clear? Can the car drivers not find an alternative route for once? It was almost amusing to see the drivers panicking as they saw us approaching, doing hurried three point turns so that they would not be held up by the few minutes it would take for us to be on our way. To be fair, they had no way of knowing how long we would take and a typical road race can lead to roads being closed for well over an hour.
Monday: swim
Tuesday: hill repeats 3 x (easy-med-hard)
Wednesday: 4 x 200m @ 19 kph, 3 x 1,000m @ 17.5 kph (last one at 17 kph), 2 x 400m @ 19 kph
Thursday: spinning
Friday: commute by bike
Saturday: 60' run
Sunday: -
The fact is, I find high intensity workouts much more satisfying (and time efficient) than long, easy workouts. So I opted to do some interval training on the treadmill on Tuesday lunchtime. Without my industrial fan and home cinema it was harder than usual to complete and I had to back off a little on the last set of 1km. In fact, I had to take a bit of a break before attempting the 400m "sprints" (well, they are for me) and, by the time I had cooled off a little, the few running machines capable of going that fast were all occupied. Eventually I managed to secure one and felt good about having finished what I set out to do.
The spinning class on Thursday started to feel easier than the previous week when my back suffered from all the standing up on the pedals. Also, the music wasn't quite so grating (still pretty bad, I have to say).
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| This was where I separated my shoulder a few years ago... |
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| ...in particular, where I landed |
I took the weekend fairly easy, just doing an hour long run on Saturday. On Sunday, the local branch of the sports giant Decathlon had organized an outing by bike in Pozuelo. Rather like the "Festival de la bici" which I attended last year, it was very chaotic with several hundred meandering cyclists of all ages, trundling along behind a police car. This time we were the whole family plus a friend of my son's who had stayed over. It was a lot of fun, especially trying to avoid clashing with other bikes and running over any of those who had failed to avoid clashing. My only complaint is that, for one time that the roads are closed for bikes, why should we have to wait 5 minutes at every roundabout for the roads to clear? Can the car drivers not find an alternative route for once? It was almost amusing to see the drivers panicking as they saw us approaching, doing hurried three point turns so that they would not be held up by the few minutes it would take for us to be on our way. To be fair, they had no way of knowing how long we would take and a typical road race can lead to roads being closed for well over an hour.
Monday: swim
Tuesday: hill repeats 3 x (easy-med-hard)
Wednesday: 4 x 200m @ 19 kph, 3 x 1,000m @ 17.5 kph (last one at 17 kph), 2 x 400m @ 19 kph
Thursday: spinning
Friday: commute by bike
Saturday: 60' run
Sunday: -
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