Slow Day and a Yellow Belly

I made excuses to myself to get out of swimming. I was over an hour late out of the office & told myself I wouldn't make the 7pm session without running about like a nutter, so to soothe my guilt, I decided I could go home via the supermarket, make something nice for tea that I could reheat tomorrow to save time & get a turbo session on while watching Zombieland.

What a load of bull Colm.

Yeah, I did a session on the turbo, but it was short & uncomfortable, and in no way could I call it a proper workout.

I did make a nice dinner and I do have left overs for tomorrow, but really, I'm nervous about getting back in the pool, and I didn't want to be in a session with the better swimmers. Its been weeks since I've been for a swim, due to one thing or another, and I'm worried my shonky technique will have degraded & my tight shoulders will hurt in the water.

Sometimes you've gotta just man up and get over yourself though if you want to progress.

Tonight's blog is brought to you by:
Henry Rollin's Liar
Nine Inch Nail's Hurt
I wrote this on my phone, so go you tube them yourself!!!

Campsies in the Snow

I woke up this morning, took a look at the window at the frost on my windscreen and decided that road cycling was not for me. I then looked up at the Campsies and the snow on them, and got a bit more excited.

Heavily layered up, I headed off from the car park up the back of Lennoxtown on the crow road, climbing and traversing to the east. The initial climb was a bit sketchy, as the hard frosty ground gave very little grip for the Mudclaws on the steep incline, and since the first patches of snow were little more than slivers of ice, there was no helping me there, but was I did get into the snow properly, there was more than enough traction.

It was a gorgeous day up there; the sun was shining and snow was fresh. Its intersting how just a little bit of elevationcan bring you above the clouds - I was only 400m above sea level, but I was looking down at the clouds that were covering Glasgow as I continued my run in a little bit of winter's sun.

4km run out along the (little) tops and then back again. Fantastic way to spend the day.

It doesn't take long to drive up there from my flat and once there, I can run off into the coutryside and blessed isolation. Its not something that I should allow myself to take for granted.

I ran the last 2km listening to assorted tracks from Devin Townsend's album Ghost. Gloriously mellow music that deserves to be listened to and fits whenever I'm in the countryside (except maybe during storms)
Kawaii
Texada

Clouds beginning to cover Glasgow

Almost there

Where did the city go?

Lonely Cairn

You could just go dissapear for a few hours out here

Tail end of the low clouds

Break from the Studying

The sun was shining & I was getting cabin fever, so there was only 1 option - get out & run!
Jumping in the car I headed up to the carpark up behind Lennoxtown, put on the Mudclaw's and away I went.
The wind was behind me on the first climb, but I started out too fast & was quickly blowing hard. I suspected I was just showing off for the punters slowly trudging up the slope.


Anyways, I hauled myself up, splashing away through the mud, still revelling in the grip my MCs give me, topping out at the first cairn in reasonable time.
Being up there I was into much more rolling territory without the long steep inclines, so I could open up a bit more, so I cracked on eastward to the second cairn.
 

Turning there, I was into the wind all the way back, but for the most part, it wasn't an issue - coming back up to the first cairn I did get pushed back to almost no forward movement however!
Coming down the steep sections at a reasonable pace, I think I surprised a lot of the casual walkers out there that I could go that fast safely!



But the MCs took it all in comfortably, and as I got to some of the less severe gradients, my grin grew along with my pace.
Well worth getting out for. Sometime, maybe late summer, I think I'm going to have to attempt a cross country run from Lennoxtown to Gargunnock - it'd be 23 miles from Milton of Campsie round through North Third & cutting round through Cambusbarron on the road, so its gonna be a reasonable effort.

Rubbish Training

Yeah, I've not posted much recently, but then, I haven't trained much recently. Between a series of colds keeping me from kciking into training properly, over tightening of my hip flexors & resultant pain for a few days and an exam a week tomorrow, trainig has taken a major back seat. I expect I'll get out for a run on Sunday, but that's going to be it really until after the exam, unless I can persuade myself to get up early enough to get in a pre work run.
We'll see.

To sum up my thoughts just now:
Anaal Nathrak
Deftones

Emperor

Starting Back Up

I need to get a proper training program sorted out and get going on it. In the meantime, I'm increasing the number of sessions I do to at least overcome the inertia I gained over the festive period. Some kind of cycle Saturday. Long run in the morning then evening swim on Sunday. Yoga Monday. Swimming Tuesday. Something Wednesday. Running Thursday. May try swimming again on Friday or may have a day off.

This is now the year of the Challenge

The year of Roth

FUCK YES!

Resolution by VNV Nation

(1:40 - some examples of warm up stretches...?)