Verbal Diarleah (The Diary of Leah)

It’s Sunday. It’s long run day. Nine miles today at 10:26 per mile. I’m still just a bit hung over from early birthday celebrations last night with friends. It was a lot of fun and I knew it would hurt today so I waited until 3.00pm to let the hangover ebb slightly. The run wasn’t too difficult but I could have very easily stayed on the couch all day and been happy. But I got out there and did it. And you can see the run here.

It’s Saturday. It’s four easy miles. Need I say more? Well, I will say my knees are starting to hurt. The first half of the run was a bit painful. I found this to be the case last autumn when I was training for the half-marathon when the mileage went up. It subsided after a week or two as my body got used to it. I’m taking glucosamine supplements and eating good fats like that found in hummus, avocado and salmon. I’ve managed to get a slot with the Asics Tech Tour when it stops in Kingston on Monday at John Lewis. I can get some advice on shoes so I can finally get a new pair. There’ll be less pressure than if I went to their flagship store in central London or to a specialist running shop. As it’s just a ten-minute slot for a mini-gait analysis, I can just say ‘ok thanks for the advice’ and go off and buy them wherever, hopefully saving some money. That’s me; I’m done. Enjoy your Saturday.

Today was a tempo run: three miles done around 9:20 pace with a mile warm up and cool down, for a total of five miles. I struggled to ‘find’ or ‘feel’ the pace tonight. I was either huffing and puffing going too fast, below 9:10 down to 8:50, or found myself going too slowly at 9:40. Ideally I would’ve liked to have maintained around 9:20-9:25 the whole time. I kept having to tell myself to slow down, as I often do. Again, though, my legs just felt exhausted in the first mile of the steady pacing. I managed to finish the run but there were a few times when I honestly thought ‘I can’t do this.’ I’m looking very forward to our break in Norway the end of next week. I really hope that the break from training for a few days will help revive me and I’ll come back rested and ready to go again. If not, then I may have to try and tone down some of the training. I really don’t want to do that because I know I can run this much but if I continue to feel so tired, something isn’t working. Watch this space. Rest day tomorrow. Check in again on Saturday.

Well, it’s been a busy day on the blog, hasn’t it? It’s been a long time since I managed three posts in one day. I’ve done my time on the naughty step for jumping to conclusions with Sports Direct. I’m still just a little bit mad at myself, but, such is life.

Today’s session was a slow six miles, pace around 10:30 per mile. I’m very tired this week and I think it showed in my run tonight. I felt tired and a bit sluggish towards the end. I managed to keep the pace but I felt it was a bit of a hard slog. I need some sleep. I don’t know why I am so tired as I have been going to bed at the same time as always. I don’t think I’m coming down with anything. I do wonder if my body is still getting used to the extra training days. After all, since the end of October I’ve only managed every other day and virtually no Saturday runs. To suddenly throw my body into three days consecutive, rest, two days consecutive, rest, repeat may be taking its toll. It is still only the third week. Maybe it will get better in a couple more weeks.

Tomorrow should be fun as it’s one of the brisk pace runs – my favourites – as I’ve said before. Until then.

So, right, ahem, I hate this so much: I was wrong about Sports Direct. Trainers come with their sizes listed in US sizes. I live in the UK. They’re not the same. When I ordered size eight the other day, they interpreted that as US size ten, which was correct. I should have ordered size six. I was not thinking. I was thinking it says eight on my shoes. I know what size I wear in the UK. Why, as is a favourite phrase of colleagues, I did not ‘engage brain’ is beyond me. I will claim Friday night tiredness.

There is egg all over my bright red face. I feel incredibly stupid and even worse for my harshly worded email to the company. At the end of the day, though, I’ll get my money back, they get their shoes back, everyone’s happy…except I still need a pair of bloody shoes. In the words of Charlie Brown: arrrggghhhh!!!

As part of my marathon training I am supposed to enter a few races to test my fitness. One is to be on 28 March and anywhere from five miles to a half-marathon (13.1 miles). The other is to be on 11 April and a half-marathon. I’ve found two races to enter for these days. On 28 March I’ll be running a 10k (6.2 miles) in beautiful Hyde Park in central London. On 11 April I will be running a half-marathon in Paddock Wood, Kent. I just thought I’d share this with you. More details will follow and, hopefully, some pictures on the day.

I use the website MapMyRun.com to map out runs of longer miles. I have a six mile route and a five mile route near home but use this website to map out anything over 10 miles. I’ve also used it to map my run in Arkansas and one in Cardiff last autumn. It is very handy. I’ve already mapped out my upcoming 15 miler and 22 miler. I use a Garmin GPS heart rate monitor when I run. It tracks me with satellites and tells me my pace, time and distance covered. It also tells me my heart rate and calories burnt. It is the best gadget I’ve ever bought, hands down. I plug it into my computer via USB and I can see every second of my run graphed out by heart rate, pace, elevation, percentage of maximum heart rate, etc. I discovered this evening that I can also upload this data to MapMyRun.com as a route. I was going to start putting a couple of maps up on here so you can see where I run. This makes that a whole lot easier. So, here you go. Here is my run from this evening, the speed work.

There should be a map here but it doesn’t seem to be working. You can, however, go to this link and see the map. I will try again tomorrow. I’m hoping it’s a problem with their website.

As you can see it is a seven mile run in total. That includes my warm up walk/jog and cool down walk home. I won’t upload a map every day as, for the most part, this route is where I am most of the time. I’ll be running it again tomorrow night to cover six miles. My other six mile route mentioned above is not feasible in the winter as there are no street lights in one section. I tried it once, couldn’t see my hand in front of my face for several minutes until a car went by, and now only run it in daylight at the weekends until summer brings us longer daylight hours. I’ll upload again on Sunday when I do a longer nine mile route. It will likely include Epsom again. Look out mainly for the 13 miler and above as they’ll have me going much more further afield.

Today was a speed work day: 1 mile warm up at slow pace; 1 mile at fast pace (8:40ish) with 400m (.25 miles) recovery and repeat two more times for a total of 3 laps; 1 mile cool down at slow pace. This was done in the steady rain. I was splashed by at least three cars. I had to go into the road at one point because some girl decided her and her boyfriend needed the whole pavement to walk. I was soaking wet and freezing cold by the end of the last mile and ready to get home to the warmth. I had worn my compression tights as they seemed to be a bit more water resistant than my others. Unfortunately they don’t protect against cold as well. My upper thighs are still getting the feeling back in them now.

In some ways these runs are the best simply because the rain and cold just spur me on to go faster. On the other hand, I am counting down each minute, each mile until I be inside where it is warm and dry. Yin and yang, as it were. I suppose, if nothing else, it means I am hardcore. Like the US Mail I run in the rain, sleet and snow. Now that we’ve got the cheese factor out of the way, in all seriousness it was a good run tonight. I felt far more comfortable running the fast pace repeatedly; much better than last week. Tomorrow is a slow run of six miles. Until then.

It’s a rest day today but I felt I had to write about this. My current running shoes are over the 500 mile mark which generally means they need to be replaced. Shoes are not cheap. In trying to save money I found my shoes (Asics Gel 1140) on Sports Direct.com. They were only £38 a pair because they were the spring/summer 2009 colour. I ordered two, thinking bargain! Was I wrong.

They arrived today. I opened one box, looked at the shoes and thought ‘they look big’. Turns out they’re a size ten! I ordered a size eight. The boxes both say size eight so I thought, fair enough one pair has been mistakenly put in this box. I opened the other box only to find another size ten! I am livid. I was counting on these shoes arriving today and using them tomorrow. I can continue with my current pair but do need to get some new ones soon. I will be going to Sweatshop in Teddington or up to the Asics store in central London on Saturday.

I’ve emailed the company to inform them of this appalling customer service and to demand a refund. I have to send these shoes back via Royal Mail, which Sports Direct indicate they will not cover. In my email I’ve demanded that they refund my postage as well because it is completely their fault that I am having to return them in the first place. I just could not believe that a company could be so piss-poor as to send you not one but two wrongly sized shoes. I have also indicated in my email that I will be informing friends and family not to use them. This officially covers that threat.

Long run Sunday: 8 miles, slow pace, easy peasy, lemon squeezy. I didn’t meet as many runners today as I did last Sunday. I suppose the drizzly cold weather may be putting some off and hoping it’ll clear later on. Rest day tomorrow. It makes me love Mondays. Lazy Sunday now. Off to Asda for shopping and maybe a spot of driving. Enjoy your Sunday.