Last week we were on holiday. Well, I call it 'holiday' and Guy calls it 'stamina training'. Honestly, all we did was walk for 3 hours a day. Well, 3 hours in the morning and then another hour later. Unless we were cycling, in which case it was an hour or two's cycling after the three hours walking. What's not 'holiday' about that? Huh?
We had rented a cottage near Bideford, cunningly planning to be near the Tarka Trail so that we could walk, run and cycle in non-trafficky comfort... and so we did all three...
We've tried to add up the miles we walked, but gave up at about 37... I ran 10k from Bideford to Puffing Billy (which was appropriate as I was Puffing Sarah by the time we got there) on the Tarka Trail which is an amazing 180 miles walking route.
The bit from Barnstaple to Torrington is 'shared use' so has a combination of bikes, walkers and dogs on it alongside the saltmarshes and mud flats. Ah, yes, the MUDflats...
New Running Dog is coming along nicely. She goes to school on a Monday night now and is really very obedient. She comes back, sits, runs beside me and is increasingly agile so that if I point she'll jump over fences, walk along walls, hop up onto benches, stuff like that. I forgot. I thought a picture of her admiring the mud flats from the top of the wall would be nice so I pointed at it.
Being a good obedient girl, she jumped straight over it.... Luckily it was sort of sloping on the other side and within a split second she was twenty feet below us and thoroughly enjoying herself deep in glorious mud.
She thought it was LOVELY. Obviously we panicked - how the hell to get her back up? No problem - she simply ran up the wall. Like Spiderman. Or Spiderdog. Good thing the tide was out though....
On Friday (our last day so we took it easy) we walked across sand dunes at Crow Point (you have to go there, it's a brilliant place) for a couple of hours. New Running Dog did the most running - she found a stick she liked and took it all the way to the top of the dunes, down to the sea, top of the dunes, down to the sea, etc, etc....
And of course I climbed to the top of the sand dunes too... I really should have taken my mud runners and I could have run round the beach, over the dunes and in the sea...
So instead of running we hired bikes from Barnstaple station in the afternoon and cycled 12 miles to Instow.... All in the name of triathlon training, obviously - we hired hybrid bikes, to see if I was less nervous on a 'normal' bike instead of my slightly twitchy racing bike. Nice at lower speeds, but not so much fun going fast. Weirdly I'm not nervous on the racing bike when I'm racing, just when I'm out for a 'bike ride'. Very strange... Anyway, the hybrid was nice, worth a try and makes me think I'll try and raise my handlebars on the race bike to be more comfortable... Guy came with me, so he did the 12 miles too.... He was a bit quiet afterwards. Something about 'legs', 'muscles' and 'knackered'...
Just a week to go to the Mud Runner then. I have my number and timing chip through the post. Eeeeeeeeek! After all the holiday walking I don't appear to have a single knee that doesn't ache, so I'm relying on New Zealand Calming Knee Balm, pain killers and Lucozade this week. My usual cocktail - it'll be fine...
Kilometres towards target(s):
Ice Cream Sian: 28 + ? Er, I don't know... I haven't seen her since I got back!
Me: 61.4 + 10k = 71.4k.
I don't think I'm going to reach 100k before next Sunday. Not if I want a working knee, anyway... the plan is to do 10k on Monday, 5k on Wednesday then 6ishk on Friday just to loosen things up. Total will be about 92k.... sooooooo close!
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