The best inspiration is not to outdo others, but to outdo ourselves

Well, I'm getting back into things okay at the moment. I went swimming on Monday afternoon, trying out for the first time the new local leisure centre. It's all very nice and new and shiny but I almost gave up and got out. It was absolutely packed - no doubt because everybody is so pleased that we finally have a pool again. They had the pool split in half, with one half being the mess about area and the other being split into 2 lanes for people who actually wanted to swim. Except that swimming and training aren't the same thing. It was full of the world's slowest breaststrokers and I was too polite to barge past, so I was getting frustrated and thinking about giving it up as a bad job when they took the lane rope out and left the swimmers' side as free space, that made getting around people much easier. Mind you, I do wonder why people who meander up and down the pool at the pace of a breaststroking snail in a random zigzag and then just abruptly stop and stand up for a chat seem to think they have more right to be there than anyone else. I got glared at for daring to try and swim at a reasonable pace in a straight line! And that was me swimming up and down the lane rope to try and stay out of the way! Still, I did just over three quarters of an hour in the end and got out feeling pretty good about how it had gone.

Yesterday I was out running and boy, it was warm. I was doing hill repeats! I did about 1.7 miles to warm up, which I certainly did, and then 6 reps up and down the portion of our hill. My hill portion is 0.3 miles and pretty steep, quite enough anyway. I was getting very odd looks from a man in the bookies that was my turnaround point! So, I ran up 6 times and walked down to get my breath back and have some recovery time, get a drink and suchlike useful things. I was very glad of my camelbak and also glad that I'd had the sense to put a mixture of water and ice in it. My drink was still cool at the end of an hour and half in that heat - good stuff! Once I'd done my 6th one, which was by that point feeling very hard, I repeated the warm up route as a cool down, so I arrived back home having covered 7 miles in total. I suspect bits of me are going to know about this, I haven't done much hill work recently as things like that weren't the focus towards the end of my marathon training.

This morning I have just been out and done a very slow 3 mile recovery run. I was aiming for a calm plod and that's what I did. It was pretty warm again, even at that time in the morning. I feel great to be back in training, remembering that I actually really like running and that I love how I feel when I'm exercising regularly and eating better. A much better sense of myself than last week. Long may it continue.