Keep on going

It was important to me after running the Alloa half that I didn't lose focus on my goals for this year; that means after a full rest day on the Monday, and bailing from my Tuesday morning personal training session, I headed to the gym on Tuesday evening for an upper body workout. I was pleasantly surprised to not have too much muscle soreness, I had heavy, stiff legs that kind of refused to step up kerbs of course, haha, but no real muscle soreness. After a good workout on Tuesday, and a couple of days back on full focus on what I was eating, I felt good on Wednesday. In the morning, I decided to go for my first run of the week, and headed out before 7am for a short plod along the Portobello prom - though I struggled to get moving, and after a short run I decided to run down onto the sand, head right down to the waterline, and run along the seafront for a while instead. Splashing along, stopped to walk every now and again, and stopping to pick up a particularly beautiful shell, I pressed stop on the Garmin, and just enjoyed a gorgeous morning by the sea. I probably never ended up run/walking much more than 1.5 miles, but I wasn't too concerned about distance/time. It was about being out there and actually enjoying the morning.

At work, I reasoned that my legs had felt fine during the morning's gentle splashy plod, so I decided to take advantage of decent weather to have a run straight from work in the evening. I left the office at around 5pm, aiming to try and run/walk 5kms - and then I managed to completely shock myself by running an entire 5km loop on the cycle paths, with NO walk breaks at all!!!! That's the first time I've managed to do that in a very, very long time - and although the 5km took me 40:05 to run, I don't care, I'm thrilled I ran the whole way without a single break. Also, my km splits were 8:27 / 8:26 / 8:06 / 7:47 / 7:19 - woohoo!!! Every km faster than the one before. :-) Absolutely thrilled, I uploaded my Garmin data, and out of everything, I think I liked the heart rate graph the most:


It's probably the 'smoothest' line I'ver ever had on a run, none of your effort-and-recovery constant spiking ups and downs I get from run/walking, but also demonstrating that as I pushed the speed a little, the effort involved largely matches up. Average HR is 167 bpm, and max 190. An "easy" run, physically, yet a nice wee milestone to have met all the same.

This morning, I went to the gym before work for a personal training session; bit of upper body, some core work, and some cardio intervals. Also, it's Thursday, so that means weekly weigh-in! Another 2lbs off this week, which is fantastic, and takes my total weightloss in 2015 so far to 22.6lbs in 11 weeks (or 10¼ kgs - or 20½ bags o' sugar, lol...) - really thrilled by that. I've had some lapses of concentration with my food intake recently, and although I'm reining that back now, it's good that I'm staying relatively consistent with my weightloss. Lots and lots of positives going into this 12th week of the year, and I genuinely feel pretty damn happy with my slow and steady progress. x