A weekend of excess

Excessive food consumption but also excessive exercise.

Hopefully the latter will cancel out the former.

Saturday was pretty good through the day and I treated myself to a really good gym session. Over the last few months trips to the gym have been hurried affairs - straight in, straight out but on Saturday, with the family out shopping, I took the opportunity to take my time.

I managed a very good weights session with weights up to a point where I'd got slight DOMS in triceps and glutes by Sunday morning, 10 minutes HIIT on the stepper, 30 minutes steady on the cross trainer, 12 minutes on the treadmill, a very quick swim and sauna and even a Costa coffee while I read the Guardian after.

The treadmill was quite pleasing. Generally speaking I avoid them wherever possible. Partly as I don't see the point when you can run outdoors and partly because I find a flat constant speed in a still warm room to be quite difficult. Saturday wasn't too bad though. I had to guess pace a bit but started at 12km/h and increased to 15 km/h. I suspect that for adding in a really short recovery jog; doing 40 minutes when the roads are icy or even practicing running form could all be doable on there. I might add in an occasional use.

After I got in I cooked a vegetable biryani. Of sorts. Unfortunately I didn't look at what I was doing and added brown pilau rice instead of the white the recipe called for. As a result the rice was still hard after the cooking time and I needed to add alot more water and cook it on the stove. That left the whole thing rather more moist and stodgy than I'd wanted but it was OK. Unfortunately, later in the evening I ate several rounds of toast and had a couple of curly wurlys as well as 2 bowls of Weetabix. With sugar! I doubt I'll have gained from that but it will have used up most of the day's planned deficit.

Yesterday was long run day, and due to the heavy rain of the last few days I modified the 'normal' route in a few places in order to stay mainly on road. That left an 11.7 mile run with a few more drags up and down hills than usual and a last 2 miles that were relentlessly uphill.

I found it hard going from the outset. I suspect that was mainly because the previous 36 hours contained a trail race, a reasonable amount of cardio and some weights. In any event I started and finished slowly and finished with an average pace of bang on 9 minute miles. Just about still inside the LSR target pace range but at the opposite end of the range to normal.

After a quick shower, protein shake, and three bread cakes we booked a campsite for the first week of the kids' summer holidays (when I'm off for 2 weeks too) then set off for Langstrothdale to do a short walk. Before reaching Kettlewell the rain started to come down heavily and remained that way throughout, so it was full waterproofs on before walking up the hill and along from Hubberholme to Yockenthwaite and returning along the river. The river is normally languid, shallow and clear but after the recent rains it was a deep, dangerous, fast moving torrent that was slightly unnerving to walk alongside.

After that it was treat time and we headed to the White Lion at Cray where I had a huge (and lovely) horseshoe gammon, chips, salad, 2 eggs, tomato, mushrooms, onion rings; followed by 4 'balls' of toffee ice cream and the kids leftover puddings (chocolate fudge cake and Dutch apple crumble). Stuffed. No idea how you'd count that lot but the walk and the run should have offset the damage. Still, it really was gorgeous.

Onto a new week, and this weeks objectives are to stick to exercise plan:

Monday - Rest
Tuesday - Club tempo run
Wednesday - Rest
Thursday - VO2 max test
Friday - Weights & cardio
Saturday - LSR
Sunday - Weights & cardio

As well as maintaining some consistency in diet, sticking close to allowances each day rather than the more up and down approach I had last week.