Chevin Shenanigans

Went to Otley last night to take part in the inaugural Chevin Chiller, an off-road, hallowe'en fun run that ended up being taken rather seriously by a good proportion of the local fell runners .  It was all a bit of a drama getting there, Helen was working late so I picked her up on the dot of 7.00pm and we bombed over there, mate Carol had collected our numbers for us already and we had time for a bit of headtorch/shoe adjustment, pee in the undergrowth etc before the start of the race. I charged off way too fast, for some reason I'd got it in my head that the course was less hilly than it was and I struggled accordingly. Actually no, that's not right - I recovered and paced the later part of the race better, but towards the end I knew the damage had already been done and 4 or 5 runners annoyingly passed me on the climb to the finish. Still good fun though, my watch said 36.41 and I don't think that's too bad for an off-road event event on top of a big chuffing hill on a dark and dampish night.  Must do a few more fast training reps though, my leg turnover is as slow as hell nowadays. There were quite a few decent off-roaders present there and I am curious to know the winning time, am sure it will be way under 30 minutes .... also interesting was the way the field seperated, fell-runners are by the nature of the sport inclined to run in the dark and there was a significant gap between these erstwhile folks and the runners who had come along for the fun of it and perhaps weren't as used to running by headtorch or throwing themselves down slippy descents in pitch darkness.  Good result for Carol (2nd lady I think), don't know where I finished - will be disappointed if it's not in the top half of the field though.

It was late by the time I finally got to bed and of course it's a swim day today ... up at 0530 to go and crash out some distance, actually I had a surprisingly nice swim. Emma wasn't there today, so I did my own thing in a nearly deserted pool .... ended up doing about 54 lengths, in a 30m pool that's just over 1600m, so far enough. It was actually good to have the leisure to focus on some technique, I have several flaws in my stroke that I'm struggling to iron out, however it did occur to me this morning that I'm much better in the water when I really focus on my breathing. I try and swim all my reps bilaterally nowadays (breathing both sides - not as easy as you'd think) and am convinced that I don't exhale properly, what I mean by this is that 1) I don't make best use of the oxygen I've drawn into my body and b) I'm not getting enough CO2 out in order to get a decent lungful in its place. Really did work on this during the session and was surprised by how much stronger I felt per interval rep (120m). A few more sessions like that would do me the world of good.

 

Helen out tonight with the girls, so I am an independed soul for a few hours:

Thoughts for the day:

- Spear the fish and put it in your pocket

- Pull, bite, suck

 

Something to consider eh?