Some Spin and a Run

I was extremely pleased with how I felt after Saturday's run. I wasn't sore at all. I was, however, rather sleepy. I went to bed mid-afternoon and slept for a couple of hours. For someone who has battled sleep issues for the last seven months this was absolute bliss. I even woke up at one point with Ede perched on top of my hip. She'd crawled up there and I hadn't even noticed. That nana nap got me through a night out on the town, and I eventually got back to bed at 2.30am.

Naturally I also slept late on Sunday morning, not waking till nearly 9.30. Hamish made pancakes and I walked up the road for a paper, indulging in a little weekend laziness as the rain came down steadily outside. Mid-afternoon I got my lazy butt off to the gym for an hour of spin. I plugged in my hill playlist on my iPod and sweated it out for an hour. I didn't use too much dial - just enough to get my heartrate up a bit and to get myself a little sweaty.

As I was leaving I bumped into some friends preparing for a two hour charity RPM class, and there was a free bike. And the instructor was urging me to join them. However I had no fuel on me and the car park was closing before the class ended and, well, doing two hours of RPM after an hour of solo spin when I'm still on the comeback trail just wasn't sensible. It was hard to say no but I managed it. I turned around and hit the showers and spent the rest of the afternoon uploading a heap of new music onto the iPod.

The hour on what must have been a slightly badly set up spin bike did, however, aggravate my knee a little and I also woke this morning with a slightly sore back. I was feeling a little sluggish when I met up with the Squad tonight to do a few warm-up shuttle runs in Frank Kitts. It was another nice evening. It had been raining half an hour earlier but the rain had eased off and it was warm and still.

Tonight's run was a simple out and back - twenty minutes down to Spotlight and back. We were supposed to aim for a negative split on the return. I wasn't sure what my legs were going to do but to my surprise they decided they wanted to play. I felt strength tonight that I haven't felt since before the surgery. It wasn't just my legs either. I could actually feel my lungs expanding again.

The three speedy members of the squad got ahead of us as we passed Capital Gateway, but I found myself running with another young blond woman in the same pair of Adidas running tights. We kept pace with each other all the way to Spotlight, then when we turned around I picked the pace up a little and got slightly ahead. I stayed ahead until we were back at the railway station then she caught me at the lights and we kept pace again the rest of the way back to Te Papa. We slowed a little after we crossed the road back onto the waterfront as we started concentrating on conversation rather than tempo. However we put in a mini-kick from Frank Kitts to make it look like we were really working it. In the end we had a tidy negative split, which surprised me.

I'm going to have to keep an eye on this knee. I'm conscious that my fitness levels are quite possibly coming back more quickly than my muscle strength, and it's crucial that I don't allow myself to get carried away and injure myself. I'm also aware that I'm running in a different Adidas shoe from that I've traditionally used, and that may be a factor. However hey, I'm having fun.

I'm doing an RPM class in the morning and I'll either do a Balance class or some weights on top of that. Duck's discouraged me from racing back into the two-a-day workout habit I used to have. I still need to do weights, but I need to fit them in before or after the run, and do a trimmed down version of my former programmes. It is all still about moderation at this point.