Beinn Dubh hill race

It's bog and burn time of year again, I love this series of short midweek hill races so despite not really being hill fit i thought it would be nice to make my racing comeback here. Beinn dubh is the 1st race in the series this year, i ran it for the 1st time last year and had a decent run to finish 9th in 40:37. I was curious to see just how much fitness i have lost since the brain haemorrhage. The answer unsurprisingly was quite a lot as i toiled up and down in 47:59 for 36th place.  The long runnable descent in this race is fantastic fun, but it trashes the quads and 3 days on mine are still feeling pretty tender. A bit of work to get the hill fitness back then i think.  Fellow bella al had a great run to finish 1st vet in 38:49, 5 mins quicker compared to my 7 mins slower- interesting to see where our respective fitness levels have gone in a year! Onwards then, to Kaim hill race next wednesday, a slightly shorter and smaller hill which i did in 34:38 last year, so lets see if i can at least keep it under 40mins.

week2 recovery

mon: 45mins spin/20min run on fatigued legs
tue: 2x1k, 1x1k off 10mins. Plus 400m reps off descending recoveries.
wed: 45spin (2sets under/overs)/20min run on fatigued legs
thur: 1hr body pump, 1hr easy paced running
fri: 30mins at about 80% max hr
sat: 20k on whw with brendan, out and back from milngavie back via mugdock.
sun: 9k easy with elsie

total 62km running
8hr15min total training

Usual monday of spin and run back from gym. Tuesday was the big one, the 1st post brain explosion attempt at some speedwork. So far I have only managed easy paced running, I haven't felt able to inject a bit of pace into the legs yet. I decided I was ready to try the session at Virgin Gym's tuesday run group. The session was 3x 2km reps at 10k pace, but for me it was really just a see what the legs will do sort of session.  Kevin advised just doing it at an aerobic effort but it is so difficult to keep the heart rate down I thought I might as well run it hardish to see how the body responded.  I could only manage around  4.20/km -about a minute per k slower than I would have been doing it previously. Heart rate was over 90% of max all the way. The only positive spin on that is plenty of room for improvement.  Weirdly it didn't feel like a 90% of max effort, normally that involves breathing through every oriface but this felt easier.  Did long run with Brendan again on saturday, similar distance as last week but went off road for a wee jaunt on the west highland way.  Legs still feeling sore after this distance.  Feels weird when the old weekend long ones would be 3 or 4 hours -suddenly I have free time at the weekends, hope I don't get used to this.

onwards

After the excitement of sundays 10 miles I woke up feeling like my legs had ran a marathon.  I dragged myself down to Kevin's Spin class at Virgin optimisticaly hoping to loosen them off a bit but it really just succeeded in wiping me out for the rest of the day. But felt good to try and get myself into my old routine.  Be interesting to see if I can manage this when I am back at work.  I had visits to GP and Brain Injury Clinic this week and they both seemed cautiously positive about me returning to work fairly soon.  Physicaly I am going to be fine at work, I am just waiting for the brain to catch up, it currently seems reluctant to concentrate for longer than a few minutes.  It was just a very short run on tuesday, but feeling better by wednesday and managed morning spin class and a 10k run. Thursday morning I did bodypump still using lighter weights than normal and ran back from the gym- about 20minutes.  Friday things went a bit backwards, I was feeling pretty fatigued all day and only managed a short run to do the friday night Peckams beer run.  Saturday was long run time, I managed to coax fellow Bellas Greig and Brendon into my short slow long run group.  Greig only has one fit leg at the moment and Brendon has only had about 1 run in the last month so we were all well matched. 16km round to Glasgow green at back, easy pace with some good chat.  Felt a lot more comfortable than last week so progress is being made.

So 1st full week back running 6 weeks post brain explosion it is a weekly total of 35km, plus 2 spin classes and 1 body pump.  Happy with that.