Week 8: School holidays

The kids are on holiday for the next two weeks, and although one is off on Scout camp I still have the other to occupy, so my schedule might suffer a bit.  It should be a good test of my motivation to see if I use them as an excuse.
I felt pretty buoyant at the beginning of the week. This was mainly due to how comfortable I had felt during my long run of the week before.  Monday I only managed a short bike ride with my daughter, but I justified this to myself as a necessary rest day after the successful Sunday run.  Always cautious about training too hard, too fast!  Tuesday my daughter headed off to the pool with a friend.  I could have gone too and varied my training but I am not a big swimming fan plus the pool is cold.   Instead I opted to do some speed training.  I jogged to the running track and did some circuits.  After I had finished two sessions of six sprints, I still felt strong and I decided to carry on around the reservoir.  By the time I got home I had run 10km, my speed was better dropping below 6 minutes per kilometer.  It seems the training is beginning to pay off.
After my usual midweek rest day, I was again with my daughter so we took another longer bike ride.
On Friday I wanted to do some hill training as the previous week.  My wife decided to come with me.  She ran a Marathon in March but has not done any varied training apart from her normal runs.  We jogged to a local hill and did two sessions of six, 30 second hill sprints.  Hard work, but hopefully making us stronger.
Sunday I ran along the river in the valley again.  I completed 12km in 1h20, not as fast as I would have liked and hard work.  My backside muscles were aching and I was pretty slow.  I suppose that in the words of the late, great John Denver, "Somedays are diamonds, somedays are stone."