Monday – April 4^th 2011 – no training.  Busy morning at school – reading, supervising than going on an excursion.  Then work in the afternoon.  I am very tired from the weekend conference.  I’ll get back to yoga this week, and plan on a couple of good runs, including a time trial.  Really.

Tuesday - I jogged the 4.2 km to the Lululemon store in the city, did the complimentary Ashtanga yoga class and jogger home.  It was interesting how slow it felt running in to town - those evening runs after a busy day at work, compared to the run home again, despite it being ore uphill.  Pace 5.28 mins/km.  The yoga stretch out was lovely.

Wednesday - Another yoga class, this one the proper level 2 Iyengar session.  I managed the bent arm stand today!

Another day, another article about bowel cancer screening - bowel cancer is the second most common cancer after lung cancer in Australia.  Then prostate, then breast.  Get tested!!

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/australians-unaware-of-bowel-cancer-toll-20110406-1d33a.html

My Pilates class at Lululemon was cancelled this evening, which was a shame - I turned up bright and eager to locked doors.

Thursday - my 10 km timetrial!!  It represented the hardest, longest session I have had to do in isolation in a very long time.  This game is soooo mental.  Trying to work out how hard to go, how early - I was just sitting on my usual 160 HR to start with and it took ages for me to feel comfortable to get it up higher.  I guess I was at 165 from the 5km mark or so, and then 170 from the 6 km mark, 175 from 7 km and finished on 182 (I thought my max was 178 - shows I don't normally work hard enough!).  So I did my 10 km in 50 mins, 46 secs, for a pace of 5.04 mins/ km.  Pretty happy with that as a starting point :)

I calculated via a website (so reliable, I know!), and it says my VO2 max is 39.31 ml/kg/min.  For a 37 year old female (me), that rates as the very top of 'excellent'.  Another 0.7 and I get rated as 'superior'.  Ha!!  In my heyday my VO2 max got to 4.2 L, so I am only a little shy of that on this sort of testing.  The testing I had previously was very proper testing in exercise physiology labs with masks that collected all the air in and out and analysed it and lovely(!) sports scientists who pricked our fingers or ears for blood every 5 minutes.  Thank you to  SASI (Pitre Bourdon and Sarah Woolford) and the AIS (Allan Hahn and Beck Tanner) for that!  But now I can't actually find any good stuff to do with this information.  I thought I would be able to derive more training zone information and pacing information, but I can't find that anywhere.   In my trawling on the web, I did find a good looking 10k training program, over 8 weeks.  Ben Wisbey wrote it, and he points out that getting speed established first will help the distance work and how that will help your endurance.  Also, it is a bit boring training at the moment, so this program is still a 3 times per week program.  It just gives me a bit more workload and purpose.  I'll start it now, get some speed up and that will help me in the second half of the year and when I start my actual marathon training program.

Friday - A physiotherapy association breakfast at 7, followed by work, kids, cooking, cleaning, ironing.  All good.  But no training.  I did some planning for the 10k program, though.

Saturday - My first 10k training session. A 'cruise intervals' session, meant to be at 6-7/10 PRE (perceived rate of exertion).  The guide says if you are aiming for a 50 min 10k, you need to do this session at  5.05 - 5.15 mins / km, and if you are aiming for a 40 min 10k, you need to work at 4.05 - 4.12 mins/km.  I'm not sure my legs go that fast.  The idea is that you are going just a little slower than your 10k pace, to improve anaerobic threshold, strength and runnign economy.  The session was 2x5 mins at this pace with 4 mins rest in between.   I did it at around 4.30 mins / km, which meant I was working quite hard by the end.  Possibly not still at only 7/10 effort, but I need to be aiming faster than what I did on Thursday, surely?

The total session was only about 45 mins, 7.5 km with my warm up and cool down, and I did most of it as laps at the local oval.  It felt like a good start, but the lower volume feels weird (slack, really).

Sunday - all kid orientated, and by sticking to my rule of not running 2 days in a row, meant no exercise.  Who can actually do yoga at home with 3 kids in the house?