Things Not To Say To An Ultrarunner

• I would get tired driving that far (You're not the first one to come up with that joke. Honestly.)
• You are nuts (I could personally feed an entire zoo of monkeys by now)
• I don't know how you do it (I train for it)
• Doesn't that hurt your knees (No it doesn't)
• Your family must be very understanding (I get up at 6 am every day and run when they're still asleep)

For some reason I've been told every single one of those in the last 5 days, from various people. Not that I blame anyone but it is getting a bit old. At the very least I'd really appreciate it if someone came up with a new, original joke.

With that out of the way, there isn't an awful lot to say about the training this week so far. I felt a bit up and down at the beginning of the week, so cut out any notions of fartleks or other fast efforts and just ran easily. It seemed to work, I gradually started feeling better and over the last couple of days have finally noticed tentative signs that the HR is starting to come down (let's hope it lasts this time).

The weather has been mixed, Wednesday was a remarkably still day with the lake almost as flat as a mirror. Today, in contrast, it was raining heavily, though conditions gradually improved as the run wore on. One of the days (Monday? Tuesday?) was particularly windy, so I guess I've gone through just about all permutations in one single week.

For a few days a had a very weird pain in my left hip that would start about 2 minutes into my run and subside another 2 minutes later. Things like that come and go all the time but the same pain kept coming back again and again for about 8 days out of 10. Very strange. The last time I felt it was about Tuesday so it's probably resolved now anyway. I usually don't take too much notice of little twinges like that but after missing 6 weeks of training during summer due to a hip issue I;m a bit more paranoid than usual.

Anyway, that's all good now, things are finally on the up and I'm looking forward to starting a new training cycle soon.

27 Oct

10 miles, 1:23:41, 8:22 pace, HR 144

28 Oct

10 miles, 1:23:05, 8:19 pace, HR 145

29 Oct

10 miles, 1:23:16, 8:20 pace, HR 143

30 Oct

10 miles, 1:21:43, 8:10 pace, HR 144

If you think those last four runs are looking remarkably similar (in fact, you can add Monday's run as well to make it 5) then you would be right. They were all run over the same route and at the same time of day. I'm a creature of habit - a lot of ultra runners are, I bet. Just don't call us nuts!