April & the DW Blues

The weekly coached sessions came to an end with the last one on the Monday before Easter. For a change the recreation ground’s surface, where it’s held, had more or less dried out to only a slightly sticky surface, but we were able to use it for the first half of the session for warming up and doing some mobility exercises. The second half was back onto the road around another road that loops around the recreation ground and its surrounding houses in an approximately triangular shape, to the tune of 0.98 of a mile. Once more we were running in pairs in opposite directions and changing over a baton as we came up to one another at the half way point. The idea being to keep up some sort of pace after passing on the baton. Luckily we were only required to do two laps of this course, but as it was at around 80% effort it was sufficient to get the idea.

The question is, was it all worth it?  Well, yes. The value for me, was in the training with others and that it was structured and regulated. Much of it was simply intervals that I could have organised myself, but the fact is that if it had been just left to myself, somewhere along the nine weeks I’d probably have let it all drop and any value up to that point would have been lost. As it was the impetus was there to keep up the effort and through that, the improvement. The other value has been the mobility and the strength exercises at the start of the sessions. These brought home just how perfunctory my warm-up sessions had become. They had been distilled down to a few stretches and maybe a half mile jog, it simply wasn’t  enough. Taking on board the full regime has resulted in me coming away from a jog session without ending up stiff and painful for the rest of the day.

The last ParkRun saw an improvement of over 50 seconds on the previous week. Although the time is nowhere near where I want it to challenge my previous best, it does at least now feel achievable that I might put in another PB before I move up into the next ParkRun age group. With that in mind I’ve signed up for another set of 12 sessions that starting next week will take me just past June. 

Meanwhile, back on the water I’ve sort of settled into the Tuesday club paddling session. I’m loosely justifying this as ‘cross training’ and it does feel as if its helping with the mobility and strength of the upper parts that are otherwise just along for the ride on a jog. Otherwise there’s little activity on the boating front and not a great deal of improvement. 

The Easter weekend has come and gone again. Once more leaving me as a spectator of the fabled ‘Devizes to Westminster International Canoe Race’ that I should have been part of if the flesh had been a bit more willing, and the mind not quite so weak. I have to say though that I am very glad that I wasn’t part of this year’s race though as I watched the whole debacle unfold from the sidelines. Almost biblical rainfall in the few days just before Easter brought about flooding along the Thames putting up the red warning boards. At several of the locks the get-ins and the get-outs were under water and the torrent was moving at a pace that only the more experienced paddlers would have been able to cope safely with. Couple this with a downing of the new DW website leaving the communication between the organisers and the competitors for the most part to Facebook made it almost inevitable that the race would be stopped on the second day at Reading.

A great pity and a big disappointment for all concerned. Still… there’s always next year.