Sparkie's rundiary

The week started well, peaked on Wednesday, and tailed off from there...

Despite a lot of interest in the house, I was explaining to Mrs Sparkie that we should expect the house to be on the market for up to 3 months. 5 minutes later we got a call from the agent saying that we had received a (very good) offer, which after a perfunctionary conference, we accepted. The buyers were so keen they put down their holding deposit the next day, and signed the contracts at the agents office. 3 months turned out to be 10 days.

Kicked off the week with an easy 12km Monday morning at probably 4:15/km (left my watch at home), which felt very comfortable. Tuesday morning I did my first interval session for over a month. 2km warm-up, followed by 8x800m (target 2:48 = 3:30/km) with 200m walk recovery. Most of the intervals came in at 2:43 (80/83), and were good controlled aerobic efforts. To be honest, I will need to increase the length of these intervals to get real benefit from them (increasing the pace is not what I need at the moment), but for a first time back session, it was very encouraging. 2km cool down.

Looked at a few uninspiring rental properties on Tuesday afternoon, and then found a perfect property on Wednesday. Filled in an application, and were given the good news later that afternoon. A friend commented how easy I had made the process look.

Headed out for a threshold run Thursday morning, but was struggling with the warm-up pace (about 4:20/km) which didn't augur well. After 3km, I started what was intended to be a 6km threshold run (3:45/km). Kept the pace going for 3km, but was starting to move into VO2 max effort territory, so pulled up stumps and did an easy 2km to finish.

Thursday afternoon, things started to get interesting. With the cooling off period not ending till 5:00 Friday afternoon, we had delayed signing the lease as a matter of prudence. Our solicitor then rang to tell us that the buyers had requested a one week extension on the cooling off period to get their loan documentation finalised. As a self-employed person, I could empathise, but it meant that we would have to sign the lease without the guarantee that the sale would go through - a very risky proposition. Spent half of Thursday night hatching a plan to allow us to hold on to the rental property without signing the lease (basically throwing cash at the owner), and the other half discovering the reason for the lacklustre run that morning (I won't go into specifics, but it involved a lot of sitting at 2:00am).

Friday dawned, and the problem sorted itself - the leasing agent rang to say someone else had signed a lease, and the property was no longer ours! Legal, and a risk you take when you don't sign a lease, but possibly not that ethical. Still, the sale was still on track, and we were in the same position we were a week before, so the disappointment was manageable.

Checked out a couple of places on Satuday (running was out of the question, as I wasn't able to keep food or liquid down), and found a place we liked in Paddington, which we have put an application in for (find out on Monday). Had to get a reference FOR OUR DOG, which detailed her placid temperament and history of dragging people from burning buildings.

Headed out for a short run this evening (5km in 23 mintues), which was very comfortable (barely breathing), but very draining, as I try and shake this illlness.