"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." -Theodore Roosevelt



Sunday 31 March 2013

Leaden legs and blistered fingers!

I've been back running now in some shape or form for about a month, and I'm in a position where I feel like I can start to step it up in terms of distance and speed. (This is code for I'm not keeling over after even the smallest run anymore!!)

I've been concentrating on the same two routes that loop me round the block on the Liverpool-Leeds canal. They've been perfect distances; a short 4.3km and a slightly longer 6.2km. I pushed it a little further last week with a 9.5km run and felt alright - not great, but as I would expect given so long out.

I've done a screen shot of my last two weeks of running:


My 6.3km route pace was at 4:53min/km a couple of weeks ago, today I completed the same distance at 4:26min/km pace - a full 27 seconds quicker every km, which is very satisfying. However this is slightly misleading; my times have been 15-20 seconds quicker for the first 4km or so, and at that point I tend to pick up the pace. Extremely encouraging none the less.

Moving away from statistics (I love them, but I'm an information geek soooo...)

I went rock climbing on Thursday. It was blooming ace! I went with 2 mates to the 'climbing hangar'; at the climbing hangar there are no ropes - you just get on with your own thing. It's basically an old warehouse converted into climbing walls.

The 3 of us thought we were (Google's 'famous rock climbers') Chris Sharma scaling a mountain like pros... We were in fact just going on the easiest routes and taking a couple of goes to complete the ascent and descent of them. Still, we had fun...

...We also had blistered fingers following the climbing; how tough does my hand look all taped up? Grrr!!


The blistered fingers are the least of my worries; the whole of my upper body has got bad ass DOMS, and I'm struggling to open bottles and cans because my blooming fingers also have DOMS; who knew?!

Anyway, as soon as the blisters have healed, and the DOMS has gone, I'm definitely going to go back climbing. It's great because it gives my upper body a workout, and doesn't really tire out my legs and so won't hinder my running.

*Embaraasing foot note* Its hurt my fingers a little bit typing this post... What a wuss !
Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. mia79gbr4 April 2013 at 04:11

    Have to admit .... I didn't know fingers could get DOMS ...! Eeek!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown4 April 2013 at 12:55

    Wow, finger DOMS is a whole new level of hardcore- and you're right, those hands look seriously manly all taped up! RRRRArrrrrr!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)