Sparkie's rundiary

The first week of the new the schedule has gone as well as could have been hoped for, particularly competing with a ramped-up pre-Christmas social schedule.

Yesterday saw the mother's group Christmas party - featuring six runny nosed boys, and not a single word of conversation not related to the minitae of the lives of six runny nosed boys.

From there we headed to Amjan's bon voyage BBQ, where running replaced toddler's ins-and-outs as the topic of choice (and saw the departure of all non-runners shortly thereafter). The highlight was Amjan's brother giving Louis a balsa wood plane - and being handed back four pieces of balsa wood plan 10 seconds later. The bar for how badly I could behave was raised

However, despite this uncouth behaviour, Louis managed to win himself a heart, with MPHaz's daughter Isobel throwing herself at him - literally. Dowry discussions have already been entered into.

This morning was the Sydney Strider's Annual Awards brunch at Homebush Athletics Stadium, with my third straight sausage sandwich meal (oh for some Special K), preceeded by a typical Strider's STaR run beforehand.

Somewhere in the middle of this, I managed to fit in two runs, after taking a rest-day on Friday - having a delicious Indian lunch with my father instead.

Saturday 3rd December - 12:30 pm
10km fartlek - 45:06 (4:30/km)
It's been a long time since I've done a fartlek session. To be honest, I like them, moreso for the mental than physical challenge. Because you choose when to start the hard sections and when to finish, you have control over how easy or hard the session is. My standard approach to fartlek is to work the uphills and recover on the downhills. Wahroonga geography makes this approach easy as there are a lot hills to be found.

I used the Garmin to record the start and end of the surges and recoveries, but the subjective nature of fartlek made this information fairly useless. The aim is to go lactic, and then recover, so the body gets exposed to working hard, but doesn't get worn out. As long as you are working hard, you are going fast enough. Some short surges were close to 3 min/km, others in the realm of half-marathon pace. An extended recovery over some rough terrain was the only real soft spot, but with this workout on the schedule for the next nine weeks, it will be interesting to monitor the progress.

Sunday 4th December - 6:20pm
26km steady - 1:51:51 (4:17/km)
Strider's STaR at Homebush. After a discussion the night before about the poor-form of people who push the pace in group runs, I held back in the pack for the majority of the run, even ignoring the breakaway pack at 12km. The pace felt really easy (about 4:24/km) for the first 20km or so, and the heart rate stayed down in the 130's - so everything was right on track. However, as the course was pancake flat, the temptation to pick things up was too great, and I kicked down the last 6km in about 23:30, feeling great. The finish included a lap around the Athletics Track, so I finished with mental images of winning Olympic marathon golds to packed stadiums (despite there only being 2 people to witness it).

In all honesty, the fast finish was excessive, particularly as the scheduled run was supposed to be only 16km. The run felt great, and the fast pace was really comfortable, but the important sessions at the moment are the track sessions, and leaving myself flat with false heroics like this is bad training. However, as my aerobic base has been run-down a bit of late, a hard-long aerobic session like this shouldn't go astray.