Week 2... more good work...

OK, this is more like it... I finished the week feeling like I had been run over by a truck (and soundly failing all over again to go to any early more Military Fitness at all whatsoever, I think this might be a pain reserved solely for New Year!

Monday - 2m run and Military Fitness

So Monday didn't quite go according to plan. I packed my kit on Sunday night, and by lunchtime on Monday realised that I didn't have my sports bra. Now there are few bits of kit that you need for running, but believe me a sports bra is a total essential! You can cut corners on kit, any long sleeve top, t-shirt, jogging shorts will do (within reason... if it is too big there could be awkward chaffing issues, but on the whole pretty much anything goes... all this dry fit, shrink fit, wind resistant stuff is cool, but the only thing that will really make you go faster is to run faster, so why waste money on kit?!?) but as a woman you can't get very far without a sports bra!

Anyway, a rather long detour via my flat meant around an hour and a half later I was at Mil Fit - phew! After a quick stop off at home to change and pick up the missing item, I jogged the mile from my flat to Mil Fit, did the class, and jogged back... it's icy right now, but it feels good to be out in it. That said I did cough the rest of the night, with the icy air in my lungs I think it managed to get right into parts of my lungs that don't get much air these days and I hacked a bit for the rest of the night - nice!

Also, in it's debut use, having just said you don't need any fancy kit (!), I used my Camelback for the first time. This nifty tiny rucksack has a 2 litre pouch with a tube that comes right round to your mouth, so you can carry water, and take some on while running. I think it might be best to walk and drink though, my attempt at taking on water while running resulted in a fit of spluttering, which also didn't help the intake of icy air either and just lead to even more coughing!

Wednesday - 6m run

2 laps of the park! This went off without incident, I have managed to get into a nice routine. Lap one is a comfortable jog around the park, keeping it simple and a bit slow, getting round without any heroics... lap 2 is a chance to let it out a bit, if I have any energy left then I take the pace up and try to stretch myself.

Thursday - 4m and Mil Fit

OK, so this was the challenge that I was dreading all this week. A friend from Mil Fit (we'll call her E - in case she doesn't want to feature in this!!) works near me and she suggested we run together when she found out about my marathon. She's doing the Paris marathon a week befoer I do London. It's great to have someone to train with. She's got a plan and everything! So I think it pays to stick with her, we both could do with the motivation and I could do with someone to help me out with a training plan.

Anyway, she suggested this crazy idea. Run to Mil Fit in Battersea, then do the class, then go home... I was worried. What happens if I can't keep up with her pace, arrive totally dead to Mil Fit and then die in class too, how humiliating would that be? E and I haven't run together before, and she says her pace is slow and steady, but what if her idea of slow matches Paula Radcliffe's and is nowhere near my steady 10 minute mile slow? And how the hell am I going to do a whole Mil Fit class after I have run all that way?

Well, needless to say my fears were unfounded. Our run to Battersea was fresh - again the chilly air saw to that! And I did drag at the back of the class around at Mil Fit, but I didn't totally embarass myself. I mean I had no acceleration left in me, once I was pegged at the back of the class then that was the best I could do, there was no sprint left! But apart from that I didn't do too badly, and I certainly didn't finish the class with nothing left, which is what I was expecting.

And so, bar my total lack of energy for anything at the weekend, I think this was another good week... could have been a lot worse, and hey, still not doing too badly in the run up to 1st Jan 2008 when the hard work really starts!!