Wednesday 9 February 2011

You don't have to be unhinged, but it helps.

Well, it's been all go in the Consani household. Sonic is now being sponsored by The National Stadium Sports Health and Injury Clinic and I've been selected to run in the Anglo Celtic Plate International in Perth in March. Essentially that means Sonic has full use of their facilities and gets to run to exhaustion, half-naked, whilst wearing a mask and I get to run round in circles for 100K. Magic.

So, the last few weeks I've been cranking up the miles. Of the pavement plodding variety. Apparently it's frowned upon to stop for a photo opp and a pick 'n' mix. Thankfully the Gibbering Midget is also on the team, so we've been training together. For club and country, we've had to tone down our specialist subjects of: boys, clothes and make-up for more somber discussions on training plans, routes, logistics and splits. Dear god, we're starting to sound like Sonic and the Crazy German.

To be honest, I'm kinda winging it. I've known about the race for a few months, but never thought much of it. With nine weeks from selection to race day, there's only so much I can do. And that's got to include a 2/3 week taper.

I've had a few great runs and a few bombers. 35 miles being the longest so far. Thankfully that fell into the great run category. I even attempted some circular repeats - this is now my technical term for running in circles. I found a one-miler close to home and ran round it 10 times. Man, that was tough. For once I found it hard to control my pace. The overwhelming urge to get it over with definitely outweighed the enjoyment.

I figured some of the training I would be doing could be quite monotonous, so I decided to put some audiobooks on my ipod. The first book being Michael McIntyre's biography. It's well worth a read, or in my case a listen. I was chocking with laughter whilst running round in circles last Saturday...nee naw, nee naw.

So back to winging it: This weekend the GM and I are running 35 on Saturday and 20+ on Sunday. You don't have to be unhinged, but it helps.

5 comments:

Santababy said...

drove me nuts last yr running round Perth and that was just the 50k! we'll be popping along to cheer you on no doubt, dont get dizzy! ;)

SteveQ said...

I'm thinking of doing a 24 hour run on a 400 meter track this spring: 400-600 laps, so I'm getting used to looped routes, too.
I'd love to run 35 and 20 this weekend now that the temps will finally be above freezing here; best of luck!

Vicky said...

Congrats on selection Debs. Sounds like you are training well. Practising 'circular repeats' is a great idea - learning to live with the monotony is half the battle. :-)

Ali Bryan-Jones said...

I had a run round the North Inch at lunchtime - if you get weather like today you'll really enjoy the first lap or two. After that you can try and spot kingfishers to stave off the boredom. I've seen two. And a dead fish.

John Kynaston said...

You'll be fine Debs.

Once you get into that economical pace of yours the laps and time will fly by.

Just concentrate on the ground in front of you, focus on your pace and enjoy passing Thomas every hour or so because he went off too fast!

Looking forward to supporting you. Make sure you smile for the camera.