Blown Away

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. As soon as someone mentions the words Maia and photo in the same sentence, something like this will pop up straight away. That’s a vibrating chair, and it is the only place she tolerates being put into. She has amazing powers. She can sleep through the loudest noises of the twins without twitching, but put her down in her cot and she’ll start screaming down the house within 30 seconds. I think my arms will fall off soon from carrying her around all the time. Spoiled? Possibly.

The weather has been challenging all week. The strong winds haven’t stopped since Friday; we just had varying levels of rain in the meantime. According to wunderground.com, Wednesday should have been ok and Thursday should have been atrocious, but in truth there was very little between them, it was windy, and every now and again the heavens would open.

I’m getting very familiar with the Devil’s Elbow loop again, just like last winter. The beauty of that route is that one half of the loop is slightly sheltered due to some trees, and with the wind usually coming from the west or southwest it just happens to shield you from the worst of the headwind. The hills are completely exposed, but the wind is coming from behind, and helps you with the climbing. I did 2 loops of that again on Wednesday, and felt quite good about it. I put in a stronger effort over the last 3 miles of each loop again (that’s the flat bit), but didn’t think I’d match Monday’s pace, until about 1 mile away from home. All of a sudden I was engulfed in a blindingly bright flash of light that lasted for about a second, and had no idea what was going on. “What the f*ck was that?”. A few seconds later a massive roll of thunder gave me the answer. This caught me completely by surprise, and it sounded worryingly near (I later heard that that very lightning strike had taken out the electricity in Cromane, about 3 miles away) and I had never had more of an incentive to run home as fast as I could. The last 3 miles weren’t quite as fast as Monday’s. I guess if that lightning had struck 2 minutes earlier, they would have been.

The legs felt rather heavy today, and I took it reasonably easy. I did put in some accelerations, not really strides, just a few faster steps. This often helps to get some juice into tired legs, and once I was happy with the way I felt I just cruised all the way. The heart rate was a bit higher than what I would have expected, but I think the present woeful climatic conditions have an effect on that. Apparently it’s going to get colder from tomorrow, down to 1C/34F on Saturday night, but every day up to Monday they’re mentioning the word showery. I guess I’d better get used to being wet.

5 Dec

17 miles, 2:10:48, 7:41 pace, HR 145
loop 1 1:06:22 @ 7:48, loop 2 1:04:25 @ 7:34, last 3 in 20:48 @ 6:56

6 Dec

10 miles, 1:19:05, 7:59 pace, HR 143