Mowed

Well. I am finally relaxing. Relaxing from a most productive and satisfying day, mind you - just somewhat exhausting and achey-making. So, from the top? ... Up at 6 and off for a run. I decided to do a slow long run. I kind of failed at both, now I think about it, but then again I'm not sure. That's probably confusing... Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Buttercup is marry Humperdink in little less than half an hour so all we have to do is ... Wait, what?

;-)

Anyway ... consistently I read advice that one should do slow long runs to build endurance (Arthur Lydiard advised running so you could converse with someone - though I presume not necessarily easily xP ); I haven't run much in the last fortnight; I only got not quite 9 km out this morning; I'm crap at judging my pace; I averaged not much slower than 5 min/km (which for me is not slow).

However, I probably could have held a somewhat breathless conversation if I had been running with someone, and in fact I did feel quite comfortable throughout. I even felt as though I could potentially have kept going and going - and doing the maths, if I did manage that, it would mean I'd get in under 4 hours for a marathon. Yes that's optimistic and such, since I've not run anywhere close even to a half marathon - but that's just how comfortable I was feeling. Which was nice. 8)

As for the can't-judge-my-pace thing, I think that gets worse the longer I've been running. I sped up throughout my run this morning, despite feeling like I was slowing (at least right towards the end). Really quite odd.

So, that was good. Why only 8.something km though? Because hip flexors, mostly. They weren't hurting, or even really fatigued, but they were letting me know they were there. ;-) I think I need to do some gym work on them. Just got to figure out how, as the rectus femoris is what one usually trains - with knee extensions for example - and that's not so much what I'm after.

Kids to swimming lesson afterwards, and then I had a swim with them while mrs tsuken hit the gym. Home for lunch, then rearranging missy-moo's room: taking out her slowly-falling-apart chest of drawers and replacing it with our old one we'd kept sitting in the garage.

Then I took our newly fixed lawnmower and began mowing. Lawns. I mowed until the (originally full) tank ran dry. Then I filled it and carried on to mow another terrace and a half. Then I had to rake up all the grass and dump it on the tradescantia hoping to smother it to death (it worked quite well in another area, which is now more grassy again).

I guess I must have thought that the two blisters I gave myself yesterday weren't enough, as I managed to score another seven with all of that - two of which have popped. xP

Funny thing was that despite feeling hot and sweaty as anything (could have wrung out my t-shirt, which I kept on only because I didn't fancy sunburn), I felt like I could have gone and started running straight afterward. I doubt I would have even managed to do today's mowing, only a few months ago. Tell you what though: I drank so much water I probably need to go and eat a handful of salt. xP

Anyway, this (seen larger here) is the result of all that mowing. Well, about a quarter to a third of all that mowing, actually. ;-) Then ... dinner and the usual kid-wrangling stuff. Now feeling the results of my exertion: achey and fatiguey.

But happily satisfied. 8)