Spring Break, Spring Sickness....

We had a great Spring Break family vacation in Gulf Shores, AL - despite early season cool mornings and some showers there was plenty of time to relax with the family but also time to take advantage of the warmer temperatures to run and ride in short sleeves since, well it felt like forever.

We did a great ride out & over the Dauphin Island Bridge, including a ferry trip, puncture and time-trial effort back into town - see the Strava activity with pictures of this day out.



Returning to Columbus, I had a "big week" planned to boost my preparation for the Louisville race where I'm aiming to PR (target is to go under 1:18:00).  The big week went like this:

• Sunday - 11 miles with 6.5 miles at 5:58 pace
• Tuesday - Track work out, 2 sets of 2k - 400 - 1.2k - 400 - 1k - 400 with the "long" intervals at 5:40 pace and the 400's at 5:20 pace
• Wednesday - 7 miles recovery in Brown County State Park (pavement & trails)
• Friday - 13 miles with 9 miles at 5:58 pace

This left me feeling pretty tired and I was playing single Dad for the whole of the next week as Clare visited the UK so I knew the opportunities to train would be limited.  However, even my limited plans got thrown out when I was hit with a stomach bug Saturday night leaving me mostly in bed on Sunday and Monday morning.  Just as I started to recover, both kids were hit with the same thing Monday night so by Tuesday evening I had three straight nights with almost no sleep and almost no calories consumed.  I'd lost 5.5lbs and felt pretty weak.
Typically, the kids had bounced back much faster than me and were pretty lively come 5pm Tuesday so we agreed to go to Track Tuesday with the Quaff ON! team - it was a beautiful spring evening and they enjoyed messing around on the grass whilst I ran some repeats.  It was a light session in preparation for the Hoosier Half Marathon which was good news for me as I felt pretty much on the limit as we completed the following:

• 4 x 200; 2 x 400; 1 x 800; 2 x 400; 4 x 200 all at 5:20 pace

It was great to see so many people at the track taking advantage of the warm weather, these sessions are very inclusive - whilst there are groups running at different speeds, we all re-group over the rest periods and everyone's yelling encouragement as people go past.

Quaff ON! Track Tuesdays normally start at 6pm at the Northside Middle School track and everyone is welcome.  We normally retire to a Columbus location service Quaff ON! beer for a recovery drink at the end of the session.  All are welcome!