Ten percent per week my arse!

This one straight from the "do as I say, don't do as I do" file.  Crikey, my knees ache.  Why?  Age-related perhaps but all self-inflicted!

I went straight from my Marathon-Maniacs qualifying streak to the cyclocross season.  Of course, racing on Sunday meant no long runs, which I suppose was a good way of recovering from the long runs and ensuring no inadvertent 30 km Sunday runs with Rami.  Before you start saying I have no discipline and willingly head out on 30 km Sunday runs the week after a marathon, you've clearly never run with Rami.  A "short ten miles" can all too easily turn into a water-less, gel-less epic as you end up by the Rotary and Rami quietly suggests "yacht-squadron anyone?" and all of a sudden you're at Herring Cove without a paddle.  Or a bus-ticket.

Still, I managed to head out nearly every day a pied and still racked in 50 to 60 km weeks, a nice relaxed weekly distance.  Just what I'd expect to do in the off-season without any races in the near future.

Anyway, since the Cyclesmith cyclocross finished last week I just started running this week as per what I considered to be my usual schedule; nice easy long-run with the club last Sunday (we ended up at the Rotary but luckily Rami wasn't with us so we didn't do the Yacht Squadron) and what with thus and that without really trying to do it, had a 90km week (last bar in the graph below). Oops.  Not just a >30% increase on the previous week (for four previous weeks!) but one of the highest weeks of the year, and I'm supposed to be in easy mode.  Double oops.

As you can see from the graph (sorry for the crappy graph, I really miss Graphpad! Wow, how geeky does that sound?)  I did hit another running milestone this week and passed 3000km running for this year; a target I usually hit.  Since I started keeping a training log again in 2004, this makes it a shade over 24000 km (or 18000 miles).

No wonder my knees ache!

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