I’ve still got no idea what I’ll do next. I’m keen to get up to Rotorua and offer to pace the marathon as I have done many times. I want to do the Christchurch marathon and/or the Wellington or Nelson marathons. My best time of 3:00:20 was done in the Dunedin marathon. If I target that, it gives me more time to train. I could focus on some half marathons for a bit and try and get my time down and run a PB (1:22 which I ran twice in 2005). I’m not sure what I want to do. All of the above isn’t an answer I’d accept from my athletes so I won’t accept it from myself. Anyway this is the training I’ve been doing……..
At the start of the week I got busy and didn’t end up doing any training on Monday and Tuesday, but hit the session on Wednesday with the intent to get a good workout.
I’m enrolled to do the Wairua Warrior Obstacle Course Race in Nelson in a team with my partner and some friends. My mate Greg is organising it and he also runs some great training sessions which I try and make it along to on Wednesday evenings and in the weekends (more on Sunday’s session later).
The Wednesday session I didn’t find too challenging but that isn’t to say it was easy. About thirty of us spread across two ropes doing a range of rope activities. The main part of the workout involved joining the ropes and then running around a wee park holding the rope up whilst the back person runs to the front weaving between everyone. All without letting any part of the rope touch the ground. This involved a lot of communication and problem solving.
Checkout Greg’s video:
Thursday saw me go for a morning run. My first decent run since the Buller Marathon. I headed to the Wither Hills and did the Quail Junction run, which is a nice 30min loop for me.
On the weekend my partner and I took our respective kids to the beach at Rabbit Island. I threw in my wetsuit with the intension of doing a 30 minute swim. I got there and the conditions were pretty flat, so I chucked my suit on and headed out – straight out to sea. I figured I’d swim out for 15 minutes then turn around. As I was going I was making good time, so figured I would do a full 2km, turning around 1km from shore. Straight out, straight back was the plan. I would stop occasionally and look around me a full 360 degrees.
There weren’t normally any boats around, but I didn’t want a boat to come out of nowhere and hit me. I also wanted to make sure I was lined up off the beach where Rach and the kids were playing.
After about 800m I spotted a yacht approaching so kept an eye on it as I swam to make sure we weren’t on a collision course. it passed comfortably in front of me by about 50m.
I got to the 1km mark and turned around, realising why it was so easy coming out. The return journey was a lot more challenging, I had noticed a bit of a swell and chop after I got out 300 odd metres, but now that I was swimming back into it I got a few mouthfuls and had to focus on being streamlined.
Navigation checks needed to be more frequent as well as the swell was drifting me to the east a little. All up a good wee sea swim for me.
I then got to spend the rest of the afternoon playing beach cricket and relaxing reading a new book.
Sunday was an early start and a rush to get the kids ready to get down to the beach again. This time Tahuna beach for another session with Greg whilst the kids played in the sand and my daughter worked on her photography skills. I’m sure she can operate my iPhone better than me. She took a lot of photos of the session today and even filmed a ‘Blair Witch Project’ style documentary about the workout. Anyway the workout involved working with a partner. One did burpees whilst the other person filled a sandbag with sand and transported it about 20m, then swapped around continuing this for 30 minutes!!! It certainly got the arms and shoulders working!
PREVIOUS WEEKS TRAINING
Here is a link to last weeks Coach Ray’s Suffering:
https://www.coachray.nz/2017/02/28/coach-rays-suffering-next/
Previous weeks of Coach Ray’s Suffering can be found here.
https://www.coachray.nz/category/adventures/coach-rays-sufferings/
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