October started out with good intentions, I was staying away with work for the first couple of days, got a decent run in Monday 30th September, Tuesday 1st & Wednesday 2nd October, 15 miles in 3 runs, good start, quite happy with that.
But then I didn't get out again until Sunday, chucked a cracking 70 mile bike ride in though, so all in all shouldn't be to displeased, first week back.
Sadly it went down hill after that only managed a 6 mile run & 50 mile ride, as well as a 30 minute twitchy session on the new rollers, which incidentally, now I've ridden them a few times, I much prefer them to spinning bikes or turbo's, it's taken 4 or 5 goes to get confident with them and I certainly wouldn't recommend being clipped in for the first few goes, but they certainly keep you on your guard !
So halfway through October and not exactly where I want to be hours per week, we were now off for a 5 day break in New York, so maybe I could find my running mojo in Central Park, NYC.
I ran every morning, absolutely loved running around THE PARK with all the other runners & cyclists (really wish I had a bike here to!).
First run was a quick 4 miler around the southern end of Central Park, felt great, decent 6:57 mile pace, then did the hole 10k+ main loop the next day 6.7 mile @ 7:19 pace, this run felt awesome, there were that many runners out this morning it felt like a race, pushed it up the hills and kept a good stride on the flat & downhill, had a few runners stay alongside me at times and chatted about running & triathlon.
Planned a big run the next day & needed to slow the pace down, I was getting carried away with the crowds, 11 miler this time at just over 8 minute miles, started to feel a bit tired now though, found a sneaky strava segment "The Great Lawn" a 0.5 mile oval path, sneaked a 5th on the segment but only because it wasn't a busy segment, this one only had 70 runners on it, some of the segments on the main loop had over 4,000 and I could only manage a top 30.
The next day, Thursday would be my last chance to run in the Park, and to be honest I'd done too much and was feeling jaded and sore. Still I thought last chance get a short run in and go for podium on the great lawn segment. 4 miler and I did manage a 3rd on the segment, dodging the dog walkers.
As after every run, back to the hotel to shower and meet the family for breakfast, then onto the day's activities. Had a really good time in NY & certainly enjoyed the running.
Between then and the end of the month just a solitary bike ride of 55 miles and the month was over.
I had only managed 17 hours of training all month, but something to build on, certainly must get to 7 or 8 hour training weeks in November, nice steady pace, just need to get the habit's back
