There’s lots of ways to incorporate training into the daily routine but there seems to be two primary schools of thought.

  1. Routine – Early morning exercise, lunch break and evening. Rinse and repeat.
  2. Random – Fit it in when you can, be flexible and don’t beat yourself up for missing a fixed session.

I’m definitely the latter despite me believing for a long time that I was a type 1 person. My work life craves structure, reporting, deliverables etc. I get wound up if I’m late, if I don’t know plans to the n’th degree every weekend or if I don’t know what time things are happening. A content home life necessitates breaking that pattern and being more flexible. I’m not flexible by nature so it’s hard to adjust.

Smashing bridges and building barriers

Of late I’ve been trying to relax more. Mentally giving myself a break and fitting training around my life rather than vice versa. It’s a long road to flipping that switch at 5:30 every night but I think I’m getting there. Building a barrier mentally between the two areas will hopefully make life easier for everyone! Squeezing a run in with the kids before dinner, last-minute decisions to spend the weekend at the beach, all things that drive me crazy planning wise but result in a much more chilled version of ‘me’ when I get there.

Today I had to return a hire car before work, so used that trip to work a run in. Dropping the car off then running home. It’s only 5’ish miles, but I managed to take some wrong turns and ended up on the Army test tracks and hitting just under 6.

Times went out the window waiting for the trucks to pass. Heart-rate went unmonitored as I forgot the strap, but….nothing happened. Nothing was harder, no injury, no drama.

Instead of stressing about it, I still had a goal – get home. The fact I’d taken a few wrong turns didn’t change the ultimate goal. Get an hours run in.

legends-run-forever-paula
It would be easy to put a less flattering picture here, but it would be remiss not to recognise the amazing athlete before making any comment on the embarrassing bit!

Fail to prepare, prepare to take emergency action

The run itself wasn’t too bad. I do most of my runs on an empty stomach but this was a little later in the morning. I hadn’t planned on a Paula Radcliffe. I’ll spare you the detail, suffice to say early spring doesn’t leave you with many options in terms of foliage to hide behind.

Stuff I’m loving

  • Podcast : Really enjoying Sports Coach Radio, some great interviews on there. Tamsin Lewis, Brett Sutton (the one and only) and a host of others. Well worth a listen. Check it out on iTunes
  • Blog : check out Pip in Motion. One of a few blogs around that talk about running but comes across as a genuine every day runner rather than one of the many ‘advisory/coach’ type blogs. And it’s really well written to boot.