Doing It For The Kids

• Posted: July 9, 2008
• |
• Author: Shéamus
• |
• Filed under: Time Trials, Workouts
• |
• Tags: Kids

Well, kinda.

Monday through Friday, I pick up my youngest son from school. He’s seven. My other son is at secondary school, and makes his own way home. He usually gets back before us. When we’re all home together, he looks after his brother while I go off and run. Assuming, that is, it’s a day after I’ve worked my night shift, or I’ve been very naughty and haven’t done what I should and ran early-morning.

Today, however, despite not working last night, I didn’t run this AM. Why? Rain! Blasted, cursed, infernal, never-ending, soul-destroying rain. Worse, it was cold, too. The wind wasn’t as bad as it has been the last couple of days but it was still out there, mocking me.

So, like yesterday, and the day before, I had to wait until all my sons were back in the roost before I could get going. Now, before I run, I have this ritual thing involving my nutritional intake. About two hours before I run, I consume a couple of pieces of fruit, and maybe some nuts or some kind of low-sugar granola bar. About an hour beforehand I’ll have a Coke. This is probably more mental than being of any physical benefit in a run that won’t last more than 30 minutes, but if it works for you, then it works.

So, I did all this as usual, picked up my son, and we made our way back. Unusually, we made it to the house first, so I waited. And waited. And waited. My other son never showed up. Suddenly I got a text message from my wife - he was visiting a friend’s house after school and would be home much later.

Ah.

See, I knew this. Well, sort of - if I’d have been paying attention properly last night when this news was delivered to my ears (instead of consuming the Internet as usual) I would have realised this was happening this evening, and not this Friday as I was (sort of) thinking all day.

So, in short, I was stuffed. I was ready mentally, I was ready physically, and I was ready nutritionally, but it wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t leave my seven-year old alone by himself, even for half an hour. I’m not that guy.

Then I had a thought.

Literally ten seconds from my house is a small park. It’s had a major makeover in the past few years and in the summer is actually quite pleasant. Around the outside the park runs a looped path. It’s actually a figure of eight but the outside is shaped more like an ‘O’. For some time I’ve wondered about running that loop. I figured it was about a two-minute round trip. I remembered some comments triathlete Rainer Muller-Horner made in an interview before the Hawaiian Ironman in 1996 about how to maintain a strict training regiment he had to run two-minute laps around his hotel in the middle of the night - for two hours. If he can do it…

So, I asked my son if he fancied going over to the park while I ran loops around him. He was keen. Actually, he was pretty excited. Kids.

We packed up his Nintendo DS, a drink, some snacks, his mobile phone and the house keys (he had to be prepared for anything), and off we went. It was cold and raining very lightly, and even though he was dressed up nice and warm and had a place to shelter, I figured it would be outrageous - and seriously dent my chances to repeat as father of the year - to be out there for more than twenty minutes. I figured a time trial made the most sense.

He sat on a bench right in the middle of the loop, I started my Garmin, and all systems were go.

The first lap took me about 90 seconds. The loop is on a slight tilt, with maybe a third of it on a soft uphill grade (probably about 5-6 per cent), a third was flat, and the final third gently downhill. The route I’ve been running normally has virtually no hills at all. Even though this grade was soft, I started to feel it after lap two. Still, my first mile pace was a new PB - 7:35.

The second mile was tougher. I’d put on two t-shirts to keep myself warm but it actually had the negative effect of making me overheat a bit. So, I ditched one of them at about the 1.5 mile point, and it helped enormously. Mile two: 7:59.

I was aware that my previous 20-minute run covered only about 2.48 miles, but that was against a much heavier wind. Once the two miles were in the bag today, I had a target to work with, and kicked into a higher gear. I managed 0.57 miles before the twenty-minute mark passed, and did that last part in 7:51.

My overall speed was 7:48/mile, which is another new peak. I was a full 16-seconds per mile faster than last Saturday.

Stats and chart:

Things worked out well in the end. The weather is meant to be better tomorrow and if that turns out to actually be true, I might try and log a 40-minute workout just to get my averages back up. But I’m pleased that a sub-eight minute pace is starting to feel pretty normal.

Site Update: I’ve added a new page to the site - 80-20 Nutrition, which provides information on my diet. It’ll work for you, too.

• (2) Comments
• Permalink
• RSS 2.0
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•