Friday 3 April 2020

The Virus!!

We have entered a strange and uncertain time, the Corona Virus has taken hold the World.  The nation has gone into shut down and everything has been turned upside down.  Sporting events, concerts, and all outdoor large gatherings are cancelled. We all have been ordered to stay home to help prevent the spread of this disease.  So how does this have an effect on my running? Well, firstly my events have been cancelled that I was training for so this makes motivation difficult as I was just peaking and feeling like I'd progressed and was really up for it physically and mentally.  The disappointment  was massive but in the grand scheme of things its not that important when people are getting ill and even dying.  The effect has been catastrophic, the impact massive.

Since the lockdown, which basically means we can't leave the house for anything that's not essential, so for me that means no work as the sports club where I work was closed and then they closed all tennis clubs after that so the outcome is that I'm home.  The government is allowing us approximately an hour a day where you can go out and exercise.  I'm therefore running pretty much every day even though my programme says less.  I don't feel I can miss a day as its now part of my routine and sanity!  I now know that my body has got used to very high volume of exercise and I need it to function properly.  On my 7 mile route I try to follow what's on my programme from Ronnie which gives me the variety of work out, so either sprint efforts or hill reps etc.  I am following this up by doing the kids PE lesson straight after with Joe Wicks on YouTube which is actually quite good to give me an overall workout which is good straight after the run when normally I'd just stop and cool down instead of working hard again.

What's the plan moving forward?  Well I have my programme to follow plus just running on feel and working hard on the hill reps as this is where I want to get better.  I am going to introduce some weights 3 times a week too. As we are unsure how long this is going to last I have to keep finding new and different things to motivate me to keep training.  I am planning on running a marathon round the garden this coming Sunday which will be fun I'm sure.  At least it will be miles in the bank and a decent long run which I need.

Keep with it folks its time to get creative!