I love Saturday morning running. I always feel less pressured. I went running recently with two good girlfriends; one who is training for a marathon, and one who is training for a half marathon (Hi Theresa! Hi Sarah!). We ran around 8 miles in total but stopped for a stretch in the middle and went nice and steadily. We spent the whole time chatting and absorbing the new route (along the canal from Victoria park to Angel, then back for a victory lap of the park). I had such a good time, I didn't feel like I was running at all. We met at 8:30am at the park entrance (relying on last night's promises - as we were not taking our phones running) and then afterwards the three of us went our separate ways for showers and for me, I went home and made some juice out of spirulina and a bunch of veg that had gone off slightly that was lyring around in the kitchen.
Running is a completely different experience in the week for me. I like going to the gym in the morning. Gym classes are different - they're at a set time, mine are 7-7:45am and you know you'll be ready at the same time for work after each workout. A morning run means depending on how fast you run depends on how fast you finish, I only normally go on 30 minute runs as I get worried I'll be late for work, so I tend to bomb it round the park, get sweaty, then throw myself in the shower. I'm definitely going to have to UP this 30 minutes once I get more into my marathon routine.
At the minute longer runs are strictly weekend only. I could change and just run after work but I am such a morning runner, I find it difficult to motivate myself after work, terrible excuse I know, but I'm tired.
I'm normally hungry too and ready for dinner. Perhaps I need to start planning a good late afternoon snack so I'm prepared.
So as you can see, I'm all over the place and I'm still developing a routine to combine running, the gym & cycling. I have found cross training and especially lots of core work the absolute key to my running success so it's trying to balance that with the amount of miles I am doing. It's easy to do loads of one type of exercise, at the same time of day, same time of week, but concocting this comprehensive all-rounder plan that I'm hoping for, I'm finding tricky.
If anybody has the secret then please let me know!
