I went to the gym and ran my intervals and I really enjoyed it – again! Maybe this is my ‘thing’!
I did a 5 minute walk at 5 min walk at 5.5Km/h, then ran for 5 min at 9.2, and another 5 minutes at 9.5.
The interval section was 7 x 1 min run at 12.0 with a 2 min recovery at 9.0.
Followed by 5 minutes at 9.5, 5 mins at 9.0 and finally a 5 min walk at 5.5.
I covered 7.51Km in the full time of 51 minutes and ran for 41 of those minutes covering 6.61Km. Pretty pleased with that.
At the last interval session I was holding back a bit on the fast minute part, so this time I decided to run it at 12Km/h. It felt great and I feel like I am really taking a turn with my running; I just need to master these elusive long runs. This week I am due to run 8 miles and I am really not looking forward it, but now I have a plan to go to the Thames embankment I keep telling myself it should be quite enjoyable and flat!
I also realised that I have probably run about 400 miles since I bought my trainers so I am due a new pair, which is a motivation to get my feet looked at. These ones have holes in the toe!! Maybe some new trainers will be good motivation 🙂
After the intervals I went home and ate a light dinner with the intention of going to yoga at 8pm. I was a bit unsure as I generally don’t love this particular class, it’s a 90 minute class completed in 60 minutes. A standard 60 minute class has several postures that are done only once, unlike the 90 where they are all done twice but this one is all the postures done twice in 60 minutes. It’s tough.
I needed to eat before yoga and had bought some jackfruit, which I recently ate for the first time at a vegan restaurant in Soho. The jackfruit is a great big tree-growing fruit that is peeled and the main flesh of it can be cooked with savoury flavours and it has a real substantial texture like meat. Realistically it’s nothing like meat and I am glad of that, but it’s something different and so I had a Thai style jackfruit salad which was yummy. I bought a few boxes and am looking forward to experimenting with it in my cooking.
I went to yoga and had an absolutely blinding class. It was hot, full of friends and good energy. I felt really flexible which may be my consistent practice over the last week but I actually think is something to do with the sun salutations. I remember back when I was doing sun salutations every morning and yoga in the evening and it really strengthened my practice. So all in all another great day for exercise.
Then this morning I had an 08:50 flight out of Heathrow. I planned to get up at 6, maybe do the sun salutations if I had time and then get on my way. But, I got a 5:30 wake up call from Clifford (the cat) and decided to get up and do my yoga as planned.
Today it was 3 rounds and it only took about 10 minutes but afterwards I felt really awake. I really struggle with feeling alert in the mornings so this is definitely the way to go. I just need to find that perfect number so I feel like it’s acheiveable to do it every day without getting a feeling of dread about doing it.
In theory I could tell myself to just get up, start some salutations and see how many I feel like; but I know that won’t work for me. I need to be getting up with a number in mind as that will drive me to do it, rather than my natural disposition that leans towards doing as little as possible! So I’m building up to 5 rounds by Friday and I might stick at that till Monday and then start building up again.
My flight gets in to London at 18:20 tonight so I could get to yoga tonight if I feel so inclined. I am not going to put pressure on myself though as travelling can be really tiring and so I’ll just see how I feel later. The benefit of my exercise being much more consistent is that I don’t feel bad if I skip a day as I am going regularly enough to afford some rest days. It feels really good, and I also feel that I have broken through that pattern of always feeling worn out from the exercise as I’m now doing something nearly everyday. Before now my yoga practice was down to 2 or 3 classes a week and now I’m up at 4-5 which means that when I go to the studio it isn’t like starting over each time. Instead of 0-2 runs a week I am doing 3 or 4, and much the same I feeling I am going regularly enough to find it manageable. It’s just keeping this up that matters and that’s been easy during a month where I am working from home a lot, the key is maintaining it when I start getting busy again.
