The Most Wonderful Run of the Week

Okay, the title might be semi-sarcastic. In truth I have a strong love/hate relationship with my runs. The harder they are, the more I love/hate them. My coach put my on hills my first week back. What was he thinking?!
I'm happy because I'll regain my fitness that much faster with the challenging hill session every week. I'm unhappy because it's hard. I was super nervous coming into this run. Would I keep up? How would I manage?
It all blurred together. We started by having a long run uphill to get to a spot where our coach gave us another safety briefing. Then we did laps along some grass. By the time we got through half a lap, my shoes were soaking and my feet squelching with every step. It was uncomfortable for the next lap and a half or so and then I sort of got used to it. The grass was not steep. We went uphill and downhill and sidehill and then back to do it all again.
As always with these runs, there is a mini inner battle: the lazy half of me wishes for some excuse to not run (nothing major like a sprained ankle, but minor like a bee sting or a scrape) and the more practical side of me says that the more I put off til tomorrow the slower my return to fitness will be. The practical side usually wins out. Except today, when my knee started to really hurt. I'm not sure if it was because I was still stiff from Tuesday's run (what a novel feeling! Running while stiff from a previous run!) or because I'm simply not accustomed to trail running.
Whatever the reason, I cut things short because I didn't like the niggling feeling in my knee. I can only hope tomorrow it will get better!

Return to Brisbane

I was reminded today that I haven't been keeping up with my running blog faithfully these past few weeks. I've done a few haphazard runs, but these deteriorated quickly as life craziness built up around me.
Well, today was my first time back with the training group. Hoo boy! I was nervous! Tuesdays are speed sessions, which mostly consists of fartleks. The one thing I've always liked about fartleks is they're short. Except today felt really long. I guess because while I knew the reps, I didn't know the number of sets to expect, so I couldn't mentally coach myself through this.
The reps were as follows (for rep/recovery)
90-30
60-30
45-30
30-30
15-30

We repeated this three times around a 300m circuit. Apparently variations of the fartlek have become a Tuesday morning special ever since the training weekend. The run was actually lots of fun, even if my legs felt like jello on the 1k cool down jog (aka stagger) back to the car.
But all this paled in comparison to the joy of being back where I belong. Running with friends! There are few greater things than this. As one girl pointed out, I slipped back in as if I'd never left. It was fantastic that the group still held so many familiar faces. Okay, we couldn't talk so much during the reps, but there was plenty of chances in between all that.
It's good to be home!