No one said this was going to be easy

Good evening dear reader, I am writing the first part of this blog (Once a week is sufficient I think) after the dreaded interval training.  Yesterday I ran a lovely little recovery run and felt like I was, well recovering so little to report apart from general pleasantness.   

Tonight I cannot report anything like that.  I ran up a very steep hill 3 times in a row and felt pretty ill on the 3^rd attempt.  I had earlier in the day asked for any advice on interval training and was told in pretty uncertain terms that the way to build up stamina is legging it up hills and then jogging back down them again.  At this point you may think I’m being a bit slow on the uptake (and running to be brutally honest), "didn’t I already know that?"....  

 Well yes I did but I just wanted someone to tell me with some sort of authority that the best thing for building stamina was cake or Guiness or watching films.  As you can tell the motivation for my Wednesday night run is a tad low.  But 3 runs up the son of a mother of a hill is pretty good for a start, next week 4?    Don’t be so mean.....

Since writing that last paragraph I spoke to someone at work about running up the hill and he told me next week 5 times.  My first reaction was “bugger off” however after giving it some thought he is right.  Because I am doing this on my own I don’t have anyone to push me for one more or shout in an American accent “Feel the Burn” or “Just do it”...  Actually I can live without the latter but the point about pushing myself more is still valid I think.  So tonight I swam 800 metres.  Next up long, run on Saturday morning.

Just got back from my long run and it is much better news today.  I ignored some advice (Start slow, speed up at the end) and followed some (smaller steps higher cadence) and I ran 13.36k in 1 hour 5 minutes.  This is so much better pace wise for me and it was pretty consistent too.  It’s not dream pace time but it is a vast improvement on what I have been doing.  I pushed myself much harder like I said I would.  It is dawning on me that I can’t just follow a training schedule like a diet I need to really work hard too or I just won’t improve.  On that note I think I’m going to have a BBQ today, have a nice weekend all.