Karen writes: Winter starts and training starts

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We have been having the most extraordinary winter, the shortest day is week after next but it doesn’t feel like mid-winter all.   Summer this year didn’t really happen, but winter 2012 may be remembered for patches of perfect, clear, mild weather, with beautifully flat seas, and the wearing of summer clothes long after they would normally have been put away.   Case in point, Sundays 25km run was in a singlet and tri-shorts and sunhat.  I left home in the near dark, and didn’t even think twice about plastering on the sunscreen and carrying extra water.


Today however it looks like things have changed.  It is getting increasingly wild outside, and the run planned for later tonight after the children are in bed is not looking like a pleasant prospect in the blustery wind and rain.  Do I remember how to dress for bad weather?  Not sure, I think there is a merino hat in a drawer somewhere, a running jacket buried in the spare shoe-box, and the water-wicking socks can’t have disappeared completely.    


We are less than 12 weeks out from the next marathon, Kate tells me she has been on the phone to her coach and is stepping up her training. I have been playing around with a run-here-a-spin-there-here-a-run-there-a-run and eating everything and anything and waiting for that inspiration (panic?) to kick in where I suddenly start to take things seriously again.  


I have made some sort of start though.  Food diary…re-re-re-started again.  And the training diary…it actually shows a marginal improvement, I did more hours of training last week (6) than I did the week before (4).  There is the advantage of having a hard-copy diary to record things in in that I can take it to bed and make a ritual of filling it out at the end of the day.  The disadvantage is that said diary is usually not where I am when I want it at any other time but it is still working better for me than the computer version. I am feeling the need to spend some time divorced from my computer.

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