I'm now at the start of my second week in Australia.  How has my training been different?

This first week has been a very easy week.  We wanted to make sure I had recovered from any jet-lag and acclimatised to the temperature, aswell as settled down a bit before we did any hard training.  So this week has been a sort of mid-season break.  I did a mini session on Saturday just to get the legs moving again, and then this coming week I am hoping to do quite a bit of mileage in steady running, before getting back into 'normal' training next weekend.

I kind of mentioned it in my last blog, but the last week or so has been really good to give me a mental break from running I think.  To be honest, I have not thought about running even half as much as what I would normally.  Back home, I used to think about running and training a lot of the time, sometimes I couldn't concentrate on work or a film because of running! I was very over analytical, scrutinizing times from training and worried if I didn't feel so good on one session.

Now don't get me wrong, I am sure that I am still that person, I am not saying that I have changed in any way, shape or form.  I am fully expecting for those feelings to start creeping back in again, and for me to be as completely obsessed as before within a couple of weeks.  That's just who I am.  However, I do think it has been really good to have a breather from it all even if just for a week.  In fact I am now feeling refreshed and ready to go!

A lot of people have asked me if I am going to train harder whilst I am away, but the way I see it, that shouldn't happen.  I will definitely train hard, but when we decided we were going to do this, we also decided to be very careful in that everything we did had to be sustainable.  There is no point increasing your training to such a point, that when I get back and return to work, I have to take a step back.  Whatever I do out here, I want to be able to continue when I come home.  So my training logs may not look a whole lot different to what they have done in the past few months.

So you may ask what the point is?  The way I see it, this trip is really a once in a lifetime opportunity.  I wanted to experience training full time and not having to worry about fitting running in around work.  I wanted to escape from the stress of work and have more time for recovery and to relax after training.  I also wanted to experience running in a different country and compete in some of the different races that you get, particularly in the states.  Finally, it was an opportunity for a prolonged stint of warm weather training and maybe even the possibility of some altitude training (not definite yet).  I can think of many reasons.  Ok these conditions are not sustainable when I come back to the UK, but it will be an experience.  Hopefully, when I return, I will be able to continue to increase my training and progress, having learnt a lot more about what I respond well too, and if there are any (realistic) lifestyle changes I can make.

That is the plan anyway!