Keep getting cramp in my right foot; it really hurts. It's still there after half an hour. Not when I'm running, it happens when I do this bloody hard swiss ball exercise thing that I learned in Austin, which involves lying with your feet on the ball, thrusting your pelvis up and rolling it in towards you. It's a very glamorous and attractive thing to watch, and I highly recommend doing it in front of a boy you're trying to impress. Jesus. I caught sight of myself in the mirror mid-effort today and I wanted to kill myself. Red, contorted face (just finished running), totally uncoordinated and wobbly legs, and trying to hold on to the carpet for dear life.

I really can't do it for very long at all, without collapsing in a heap. It doesn't look hard but it is, or at least, it is for me. I have a swiss ball at home, so I think from now on I'll just humiliate myself between my own four walls.

Other than that, feeling a lot better today (Had the stomach cramps from hell yesterday, could barely move by the end of the day). But tonight, on just two cups of coffee and a yoghurt (stupid I know, but hectic day) I managed to do quite a hard workout. And now I'm ravenous. And there's no food in the fridge except for some mouldy rye bread and some grapes. I'm so organised.

15 x mins crosstrainer
45 x mins treadmill (1 x mile warmup, then 400m intervals at 9.11 pace with 200m jogs.)
10 x mins powerplate
20 x mins weights and things

Here are a couple of pictures from the race:



I spy a little bunny.



Delicious.

OK I'm back. I've had a hearty break from running. Other than the race, and a quick 25 minutes round the lake last week, I haven't run at all. It wasn't a particularly intentional break, it's just that I've had insufferable jet lag. Why oh why oh why do I get this so badly. Here are my sleeping patterns since last Thursday:

Thursday: (Austin) - awake approx 8am - leave for New York at midday. 4hr Flight. 4hr wait at JFK plus 1.5 hr delay. Board plane. Further 3 hr delay on runway before takeoff. 6 hr flight. No sleep, fidget-arse next to me.

Friday: Arrive London 10.30am Friday morning. Bus to Gatwick. Lift home. Arrive 1pm. Sleep from 2pm to 6pm. Awake till midnight. Go back to bed. Don't sleep till 4am. Sleep till 1.30pm Saturday afternoon.

Saturday: Awake 1.30pm. Stay in bed and read. Fall asleep and wake at 5pm. Go out and see Flaming Lips. Bed at 1am. Don't sleep till 6am.

Sunday: Wake up at 1.45pm. Panic as supposed to meet Spock at cinema at 2.15. Am late for cinema. So is she. Bed at midnight. Still awake at 3am. Up at 5.45am this morning for work.

I am so tired.

Anyway, forced myself to gym tonight and felt much better for it. Am hoping for something close to a normal night's sleep tonight.



These are my fancy new shoes that cost $146.00 and that I feel guilty about every time I look at them. But.... aw gawd... I'm not sure about them. They pinch a bit. He measured me and said I'd been wearing half a size too big. I'm normally an American 10. These are a 9.5 but... I think they might be a bit too small. And they're quite narrow too. It feels like my toes are all squished up when I run. Hopefully they'll loosen up a bit. It's not like I can take them back or anything.

I felt a bit shit running tonight. Like when I came back from France. I just wanted to do half an hour to ease myself back into it, and I started off quite slow. After about 7 or 8 minutes my legs were killing me. That really horrible shin-splintsy type feeling I always get if I haven't run for about five days or more. I didn't get all stressed about it tonight because I know it'll be back to normal in a few days, but I did have to stop and walk for a minute. I decided to spend the remainder of the time doing 400m intervals, fastish, then a slow jog. The leg-pain pretty much disappeared when I was running faster and returned when I was jogging.

I like doing intervals, I think.

15 x mins crosstrainer
30 x mins treadmill
(The faster 400ms were taking about 2.20 mins/9.23 mile pace. I know I can do them faster when I've had more sleep)
25 x mins weights.

I did my free weights standing on a jelly thing as per my expert personal training session last week. I am the most wobbly, uncoordinated, uncentered, ridiculous-looking weeble in the gym.



I found a half-marathon training schedule that is based on three runs a week, plus two cross-training and strength training sessions. This kind of appeals to me because of the amount of time I spent either injured or with niggly little pains or other problems on the four runs a week plan I did before. Although I suppose this time it will only be half as intense. I don't know. I'll have a look at a few.