Running adventures and finding elevation: Flat glorious trails!

Well there we have it! Finally a somewhat normal week of training and exercise. It was such a buzz getting through to Sunday and having the body feeling in good shape.

The plan after seeing my physio was to run every second day and doing plenty of stretching/strengthening in between.

Monday involved a casual half hour paddle before work. Was going to have the day off but the weather was so nice so I decided to have a quick one before work.

Tuesday was a 10km run along the Heritage trail. It is really nice and flat trail from Boya so good to utilise this area while I am staying away from the hills in my build up. Ran approx. 47mins for the 10km increasing the pace once I turned around and things felt really good.

Wednesday was a gym session doing my exercises and also some upper body weights as well. The exercises have now had 5kg weights added to make them a little harder which I am finding is going really well. My core seems to be stronger and have more control doing these. Nice to do something different in upper body weights which I very rarely do.

Thursday's run was bumped up to 15km along a different section of the Heritage trail with Adam. The plan was to take this really easy as it was the longest hit out since my time off running. I planned on about 5min k's for the first half and then speed up a bit on the return. We were soon doing 4:50min k's on the way out which was seeming easy and came home a touch quicker. Average pace was 4:44min k's so pretty quick but felt well within myself which was great. It was a good run also in the sense that as we went along I felt like I hadn't lost too much with my time off and the pace was really comfortable (conversation pace).

Friday was a complete day off with plenty of stretching and hydrating in preparation for Saturdays run.

On Saturday I met with James and his sister Amy at Helena Valley Primary School to head out for 20km along the Western Australian Marathon Club King of the Mountain course. James and Amy planned on doing the full 15km out and back to make 30km but I was strictly sticking to my gradual increase up to 20km for today. My personal plan was to take the first 10km really easy and then when James and Amy carried on I was hoping to increase the pace slightly heading home. It ended up that James and Amy decided to do the 20km with me so the final 10km ended up at a nice pace back to the cars. It was a really nice run and nice to run somewhere different.

Sunday was a rest/gym day. Working on some more core exercises and stretching.

It feels like I have made a real turn in the right direction with my training this last week. I feel like I am in control of how things are going and I feel I have more purpose with each training session/strength & stretching routine. I truly feel that my exercises have assisted hugely with getting me back on track and happily running again. I'm really enjoying being back on the trails and looking forward to another gradual increase in training next week.