Monday, January 11, 2010

Flat Hunting and Getting Back to Some Running

Am going to experiment for a little bit with doing more frequent short little blogs and seeing how it goes- plus probably a little bit more about my daily life where I hopefully won't get fired for posting something about my time working at my firm! I'll also start the training log each week and update it as I go along with the week's training.

Well with the big accountancy (yes - dull I know!) job starting on March 15th it's time to start flat hunting. Headed down last Thursday with Jan who I'm sharing with and spent the whole day searching around Clapham with highlights being "double" bedrooms which would fit a single in at a squash. No - not a single bed - a single person and several flats within "10 minutes walking distance" of the tube that I swear I couldn't get to in ten minutes at race pace. Midway through the day it was looking pretty bad but then in our last viewing of the day we found a fantastic little flat just off of the Common just outside our price range but hopefully with them coming down as we made an offer today after viewing a couple more properties. The highlight this time being a property "right by Clapham North" which ended up being in Brixton. Yes, Brixton.

Anyway- now we've found a decent property providing we get it then I should be moving into London on February 13th so anyone with suggestions for good training groups and partners in South-West/Central London around Clapham I'm looking forward to hearing them! Part of the reason Clapham suits me so well is that it's about 4-5 miles run from Blackfriars (where I start work) and probably 6-7 miles from Canary Wharf where I'll end up in 6 or so months time I expect. Perfect for a morning and evening run. Just need to find some convenient showers now!

Managed to get a 39 minute run in this morning. Foot held up really well- honestly reckon it might have been able to take 60+ but being cautious and not risking it at the moment. Average pace was down to 8:04 over fairly snowy terrain. Pace this week has consistently come down from ~9:30 to 8:00 - obviously this is totally small fry compared to race pace work but shows I'm getting a bit more confidence in the foot.

Know I can't have lost much fitness having only not run for a week and having got straight on the exercise bike (another 60 minutes this evening- including a 1:09 1k TT - down 6 seconds on my first one - and yes I know that ex. bikes are nothing compared to the real thing but seeing as that's all I do it works to compare them internally!) - but feel like I've not run for months. Silly isn't it. Could probably still crack out a PB over any distance but feel unfit. Ridiculous.

What I am vaguely interested in is just how much running I need to do to maintain fitness levels- obviously last week I ran 11 miles- clearly not enough unless composed of 22 x 800 TTs (in which case it'd be interesting...). I rekon that on 30-40 of mostly aerobic stuff with a few faster miles can keep me in condition for a month or so but really not certain. Any thoughts from the more experienced runners out there?

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Bryn Running

Training diary and musings on running in general.