This is part of a series of posts reflecting on my experiences in the run up to the Yorkshire Marathon in October. I’m currently on week six of a twelve week training programme. The idea is to write a post every week charting my progress and reflecting on my training.
This has been a challenging week!
As I’ve been on vacation all week there have been plenty of distractions. Having said that though, I’ve run more miles this week than any other week in my training so far. Not to mention walking – I’ve clocked up some serious miles (about 30,000 steps a day).
Long Beach Half Marathon – It looks like I was having way too much fun in this shot!
However, the quality of my running has been poor. By poor, I mean I just haven’t really been able to do anything other than slow or long runs and I put this down to three factors:
- The heat. Just walking round LA is punishing; running is torture.
- The roads. It’s been practically impossible to do any kind of tempo run at pace, because you have to wait for the pedestrian crossings at every street corner. The roads here are not like in the UK where you can dodge across without too much bother. There’s six lanes – imagine trying to run across both sides of a motorway in the UK. Exactly, you just wouldn’t. So basically you’re stop/starting all the time.
- The hills. The closest parks to run around are not flat. Runyon Canyon Park and Griffith Park both have some steep ascents, and I mean steep!
Training programme
Basically, the training went more than a little awry this week and I didn’t do any gym work. Still, there were some positives, let’s start there:
- Monday: After having missed my longest run yesterday, knowing that I had the Long Beach half marathon today the day got off to an early start (5am to be exact). I booked an Uber as Long Beach was an hour from the hotel and got there in good time for the race start at 7am. The course involved three laps around the Marina. I took it steady on the first lap and tailed another runner (as I didn’t really know where I was going!), then picked up the pace in laps two and three. By lap three the sun was up and the heat was starting to kick in, but I’m thrilled to say I made first place. Great start to the week! The full results and all the photos can be found on Charlie Alewine’s site.
Long Beach Half Marathon
- Tuesday: Rest day. I spent it walking around Runyon Canyon Park. Apparently the home to many a rattle snake (I didn’t see any though)!
- Wednesday: According to the schedule I needed to do an easy paced run. I’d already plotted a route out yesterday round Runyon Canyon Park so I did that. It was hard running with a 309 metre elevation gain – I was shattered even at easy pace. The views were stunning though.
View of downtown LA from Runyon Canyon Park
- Thursday: Rest day. I had a pleasant walk round Paramount studios.
- Friday: I was meant to do a tempo run – I ended up doing a long(ish) slow run round Beverly Hills. I got lost :-/.
- Saturday: Rest day. I went to Pasedena and had a good walk though round The Huntington’s botanical gardens. Beautiful.
The Huntington – botanical gardens.
- Sunday: Long run. I did nearly three hours of running round Griffith Park up to the Observatory, on to the Hollywood sign, then back to the hotel. The climbs and heat nearly killed me! At least I could comfort myself with the fact that the weather would be considerably cooler in the UK in a month’s time.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved every minute of my time in LA, but next week at home I’ll be looking at getting back into a routine and doing faster-paced runs.
Next week I’ll also probably complain that it’s too cold – hey ho!
Apologies to those of you who usually drop by for updates about learning technology – I tend to post about that kind of thing on Jisc’s Inspiring Learning blog. I intend to use this blog for more personal, non-related work posts in future.
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