Week 2 Round Up

It's Monday and that means its the start of week 3 of my half marathon training.  When I first looked at the plan I couldn't believe that first of all I'd have to run for 30 minutes non stop in my very first session regardless of the pace and that at the end of week 2 I've had to run for 40 minutes non stop, I almost gave up before I started.

Before I get into how that run went here's how food looked on Friday:

Breakfast was 40g oatbran, 100ml semi skimmed milk, a heaped teaspoon of 4 seed mix, 20g of dried mango and a few strips of dry coconut shavings from my trail mix, it was delicious.

Lunch was the same as Thursday, one wholemeal pitta (no spread/butter) 2 slices of mustard coated ham, one mini red pepper, one mini orange pepper, a 3" chunk of cucumber and a heaped teaspoon of organic houmous.

I got halfway through my wholemeal seeded bagel with organic crunchy peanut butter and a little coating of banana coins when I suddenly remembered to take a photo so apologies for the half munched look!  I wouldn't normally have something like that on a non run day but the last half would have gone rank in my office cupboard over the weekend and I needed to try and get all my calories eaten too so it seemed like a good option.

Dinner was a Chinese beef, broccoli and cabbage stir fry it was utterly delish!  No noodles so I didn't have that gross tired full feeling afterwards which was just as well seeing as I had to drive back to Wales straight away.

Food this weekend has been mixed, Saturday night was my treat meal so I had 2 poppadoms, half a serving of chicken tikka masala, 2 spoons of boiled rice (incidentally did you know that pilau rice is the equivalent in calories of a portion of boiled rice with a CHEESEBURGER in it?? Bleurgh) a quarter of a peshwari naan and half a serving of chana aloo (curried chickpeas and potato). It was yum and guilt free!  I also had one small white wine and soda as I was running on Sunday morning.

Sunday I had one slice of wholemeal toast with olive oil spread and a banana chopped up on top about an hour before we went running.  Lunch was a roast made by my mum, I had a chicken breast, 2 roast potatoes, one yorkshire pudding, loads of veggies and a little drizzle of gravy mmmmm.  For pudding everyone had some chocolate fondants I'd made and stuck in the freezer, I passed as my treat meal was Saturday, and for dinner I had the other half of the chana aloo from Saturday night.

Saturday I decided to do my Yoga dvd again as my X training session.  I'm really starting to love this.  Each time I do it I'm getting a little deeper into the movements and I love the feeling of bringing length and strength to my muscles whilst also having a bit of time to myself to be quiet and relax.  Its brilliant I really can't recommend it enough.

Sunday was long run day....  Mr D decided he wanted to run too and whilst its so sweet that he's trying to support me it does really make me feel down that he shoots off ahead despite the fact that he's not exactly athletic or super fit.  I just have to keep telling myself that yes I probably could go faster but that's not the aim of the easy/steady runs, its just to be able to run for a specified amount of time without completely knackering myself out!

Anyway I was pretty worried about running for 40 minutes especially after 5 easy/5 pace run on Thursday, put that together with having little time for warm up stretches and I started off feeling a bit pessimistic about the whole thing. 

As we were in Wales this weekend at least we had a change of scenery and I'd been on map my run for ideas of where to run, we started off in the park:


Not bad is it?  Then towards the high st and over the Monnow Bridge:



Along the main road, did a loop around a housing estate, back over the bridge, up the high street, past Monmouth Boy's School:


And back through the park to where we started.

I ran for the full 40 minutes and when we finished Mr D and I had a little walk around the park together and talked about how we found the run and noticed that neither of us were out of breath or in as bad a state as we'd thought!  I had a few niggly pains in my knees but those seem to have gone this morning and I'm pleased to report I wasn't as purple as normal either - RESULT!  Anyway, my Nike + tells me the run was 6.79km which I'm pleased about, I think that's my longest run ever and after only 2 weeks.

So lovelies here's my training plan for the week:

Monday: rest day (plan says 30 min easy run/rest  but I've decided that for now I'm just going to rest on Mondays)
Tuesday: 30 Min Easy
Wednesday: Rest (might do yoga)
Thursday: 4 Min easy run/walk 6 minute threshold/HM pace x 3 built into 30 min running
Friday: Rest
Saturday: X train (probably yoga or might do a circuits session)
Sunday: 40 minute run

Well that's my week, how's yours looking?