With daylight savings drawing to an end, the mornings are noticeably a lot darker which can make running a little more hazardous.  When running in the city on some of the more mainstream running tracks it isn’t normally an issue – however when you venture out on the roads and through parkland (like where I ran yesterday & near where I live) it can get a little scary!

Yesterday’s run was only a 50 minute hit out, which equated to around 9kms.  You can see the run on Endomondo at the following link.

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/goX3zh33E5c

A while back I bought a reflective wrist band from Wiggle.co.uk for early morning runs in darkness- but after a few times through the wash – it’s now just a wristband – its reflective qualities have vanished.

This I discovered just as I was about to head out the door.  Not wanting to miss the run having already missed 2 runs this week due to time constraints, I just took off.  Now a large section of the run I was planning is along roads that get pretty busy during the morning rush and are not well lit.  As a rule, I always run towards the traffic so I can see them coming and ensure I stay out of the way of oncoming traffic.  However on this day, in the dark – its fair to assume that a few cars either didn’t see me or didn’t much care that I was there.   Either way, I found a new way to lift the heart rate while running.  Anyone else had a few near misses?

I was very pleased to be off the road and running on the footpath and decent running tracks.   Back to wiggle.co.uk for some reflective gear …

Poor Missy the golden retriever is most disappointed that there has been no interval running this week.  I’ve been coming back in the door to a sorrowful look with a tennis ball in her mouth!  She’s in for a treat next two weeks though – 15 interval speed running up hill for 300m (great intervals and hills together – my two all time favourites!),  6 x 500m at speed with 1 minute standing rest and then 4 x 1km at speed with 1minute 30seconds standing rest.

With less than 3 months to go until the marathon I feel missing any training session from the program is going to impact my ability to finish in a reasonable time.  In 2 weeks I have a 14.4km race and a month later a 13.2km race (this one is mostly an uphill climb).  That should be enough race time – now it’s getting the kms in the legs.

I do find that I just can’t do two big runs in consecutive days.  Suffering from rheumatoid arthritis the joints just don’t like too many days in a row of pounding on the road, track or footpath.  So the days in between I go to the gym and usually bike, row or crosstrain, or a combination of 2 or 3 of these followed by some weights and stretching.  Not the same as running – but better than doing nothing.

Any tips or hints on exercise or activities between runs to maintain conditioning gratefully received.

And of course, my top 5 running songs from the playlist from yesterday were:

American Woman – by Lenny Kravitz
Don’t Stop Me Now – by Queen
Running Down a Dream – by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Better Than You – by Metallica
Empire State of Mind – Jay-Z featuring Alicia Keys (not one for trying to run fast)

Well a 2 hour run coming on Sunday and I’ve got a good friends birthday party the night before – better make sure I behave!

Happy running!