Doing it tough…
Over the weekend London had two of the warmest days for the year so far, which is a lovely change from the normal grey skies and cold winds. It means BBQ’s, picnics and lots of pasty white skin seeing the sun for the first time in months!
So on Sunday I decided to push myself further with two long cardio sessions, it began with a 1h 45min spinning session in a rather hot and stuffy gym room. If I had a bike I would have definitely preferred to be outside enjoying the morning sun, even though it would be difficult to get as tough a workout as spinning because of the traffic and other obstacles limiting speed and a general lack of gradient all around London. After the session I jogged back home, absolutely wasted and dripping like a rusty tap with sweat.
As my wife and I had been invited to a friends house for a BBQ (they’re impossible to avoid at this time of year, even for people trying to avoid meat!) later in the afternoon which was on the other side of London (9miles/14km’s away), I convinced my wife that running there would be a good way for us to get our exercise in while also seeing some other parts of London. I contacted our friends and asked if we were ok to use their shower as otherwise I don’t think we would have been very welcome BBQ guests, then we packed a bag and set off.
While I was aware the temperature was about 26 degrees and I knew it was going to make things tough I was pretty confident I was up to the challenge and figured my wife would be as well as long as I didn’t push her too hard.
Sadly the most direct route to their place took us through some fairly urban areas of London that weren’t particularly enjoyable scenery with plenty of road traffic. I’d decided that the most direct route was the better option rather than running along the Thames river bank which would have added more than a mile to our journey.
As often seems to be the case these days, my decision was wrong and the cumulative effect of the heat, scenery, traffic and lack of training (she’s been too busy to do much at all) got to my wife and after 45mins she requested we cheat by taking the tube part of the way.
I am of course not trying to torture my lovely lady, so navigated us to the closer tube station. We took the tube for a few stops to get closer and to a nicer part of town and then ran the remainder of the journey.
I’m not exactly sure but by my calculations we ended up running about 7.5 miles/12 km’s (took us 1h 30mins including tube journey), after which my wife was completely wrecked and I was breaking new records for excessive sweat and overall pong factor.
I was surprisingly pleased how well I coped with the double cardio session and the temperature as I haven’t done much warm weather training. As some of you may recall, a warmer than expected day for the London Marathon last year was certainly a major contributor to my downfall (for those that don’t know, I did finish but not in style).
For once my wife even felt a little sorry for me, as she acknowledged that now she understood why I had struggled so much in the marathon.
While it is certainly more pleasant to train early in the morning or late in the evening, going forward I’m going to try and make more of an effort to get out during the warmest part of the day as it’s definitely very important to make sure the body is conditioned for more extreme types of weather.
‘You wont know how tough it is until you’ve done it’
Nomorebigfella
i absolutely adore doing anything outside and the hotter and sunnier the better!!! but similar to your wife, i probably wouldn’t love fighting traffic!
The Get In Shape Girl
May 26, 2010
Yeah it’s a good point, I’ll be smarter next time
nomorebigfella
June 1, 2010