Personal Best

Thursday:

I decided to go for my 1 hour lap of the lake attempt today. I got there quite late after taking my husband to a doctor's appointment (more on that later) but it was a cool and cloudy morning so good conditions for a walk/jog. Do people even talk about jogging anymore? Or is it all running? What I do could possibly be called running, some of the time. Or lurching, when I get really tired. But I think jogging describes it best.

I parked at the library, started my HR monitor, and set off. From the first jog my shins hurt. They had hurt a bit on Tuesday, but much worse today. So as much as possible I jogged on the grass beside the path, which was better (although it did mean getting attacked by one duck daddy protecting his family). Going over the bridges was good too, I like running on the gentle upslope. By about halfway round my time was really good and I had done 10 jogs; all probably less than 50 metres. From there on, though, I started to slow down. I kept lurching into a jog regularly and ended up with 23 jogging "sprints" (or possibly more, I lost track a couple of times and was conservative with my calculations) but in between my walking pace was much slower than in the first half. The clouds cleared and it became quite hot, and I was getting very tired.

Crossing Commonwealth bridge, near the end, I saw lots of police standing along the roadside and realised that half of the road (the half I wanted to drive on to get home) was empty of cars. Obviously it had been cleared for American president Obama -- visiting Australia for a couple of days -- to drive on. Do they do this in America, everywhere he goes? That must get inconvenient. We don't do anything like that for our Prime Minister, but then probably not many people want to kill her. There were helicopters overhead too, and a few people were loitering to watch him drive past but it didn't happen while I was beside the road. I resolved to take another way home.

Nearing my starting/finishing point, I realised that I was getting close to the end of the hour. I jogged a bit more but right at the end I walked. I wanted to run that last bit but my body just wouldn't comply. I made it back and stopped the clock -- 56 mins! Yay! 7 mins less than Tuesday. Quick drink and then headed home, only to get caught in a traffic jam on a different road, we all sat still for about 20 mins while (I assume) Obama was driven through an abandoned city centre. I just read the book I had with me until we could go again. I was pretty hungry though. When I got home I loaded up with rice and tea with lots of sugar.

For comparison:

Tuesday Thursday

63 mins .................... 56 mins

zone 0: 73% ............. zone 0: 36%

zone 1: 21% ............. zone 1: 36%

zone 2: 5% ............... zone 2: 22%

zone 3: 1% ............... zone 3: 4%

zone 4: 0% .............. zone 4: 2%

160 cal ..................... 181 cal

average HR 104 ..... average HR 114

peak HR 172 ........... peak HR 176

I was really sore all afternoon on Tuesday so I am expecting that again today.

Tim's doctor's appointment was about his blood pressure, and he has finally been put on medication for it. Scary that his blood pressure is that bad, but good that he is doing something to address it. It seems to be from work stress, so I am hoping that will be reduced in the new year.

photo by The Happy Rower