I've been exercising as if I were training for something, but I'm not, particularly, though I did sign up for this year's Run for the Toad, which has got me back to weekend long runs. Thankfully, there's been time every weekend for a long run -- for the past five weekends. My first long run was a painful and painfully slow 15km, and I'm now up to 21.6km (why didn't I just run a few extra steps and round that off? because the trail ended there, that's why!).
My most recent run was on a beautiful trail made out of an old rail line through Eastern Ontario. We were on holiday, or I'd run there all the time. Wish we had such a fabulous trail nearby. I ran the half-marathon distance in 1:57 minutes, which is slower than I'd expect to run it in a race, but pretty fast for a gentle training run. As per my style, I started slow slow slow, and by the end was knocking off 5-minute-flat kilometre splits. I don't know why my body works that way, but I just get into a groove and start rolling.
I've been having painful cramping after my long runs, however. Not that this discourages me, but it does make recovery more difficult and stretches out the time needed to commit to a long run every weekend. I'm hoping it will pass as my body becomes more accustomed to the distance. I would like to be running 20km every weekend -- or longer, of course. It only took five weeks to go from it being really really hard to run 15km to truly pleasant to run over 20km.
Also boosting my fitness in the past two weeks has been a daily swim. I swam 10km last week, and will only get to about 8km this week. I'm swimming during my older kids' daily swim lesson, which goes for an hour, and they only have four lessons this week. I've gotten a bit faster over the past two weeks, but not remarkably faster. It took me the full hour to swim 2000m on day one, and I now can do it in about 50 minutes, but that's still slooooowwww. I think I'll always be a slow swimmer. But I definitely have endurance -- I could just keep going and going. And I can swim in really cold water! It's been cold both weeks, with the temp in the pool hovering around 68 degrees F and the air temp around 18-19 degrees C. No sun. Rain a few days. Cloud cover. Fun! By the end of the hour I'm shivering uncontrollably and my teeth are chattering -- in the pool, while swimming!
A couple of days I was one of only two lane swimmers in the whole pool -- and the one day the other guy was in a wet suit. I was thinking that only someone training hard for something would put themselves through the experience -- and me! I don't know why, but I actually weirdly enjoy it. It gives me a mental break from everything else going on in my life. It makes me feel heroic, which is silly, since it's a completely self-induced heroisim that could potentially look like idiocy to an outside viewer, but there it is.
A couple of weeks ago I ran 40km and played two soccer games AND went to a boot camp within a five-day span. This is what my summer has been like. I've been working out -- hard. I'm not sure why, but it feels necessary. I suspect it's keeping me sane. It's been a crazy summer, with curve balls thrown at us, and the need to stay mentally calm and focused in order to get really hard work done ... I don't know what I'd do without the running/swimming/soccer/weight training. I think I would have collapsed by now. Instead, I feel like I feel in the pool: heroic and strong!
(As a side note, I hope I haven't jinxed myself by writing about this -- as soon as I note my training pace, it seems something pops up to prevent me from doing my daily workout ...)
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