The last few weeks have flown by – which is a good thing. I’ve found myself a lot busier with teaching than usual, which is always valuable in supporting coaching. The last week I spent in a very different school, the Caldecott Foundation which provides an environment far more suited to children with very complex learning / behavioural needs. As I expected some brilliant moments and some really distressing moments. The highs and lows always further apart in a school with complex children.
What all the teaching has meant is less time to reflect / think / write as I’m pretty much doing. So having a day to consider & plan is not only welcomed but really needed. With that in mind these are some of the things that I’ve been interested by / in / thinking about over the last few weeks:
London Marathon GFA accepted – Apr 27th next year, I’ve been loosely training base for this, now it feels sharper as my entry is confirmed.
Kent XC – I’ve raced 3 times, the juniors just finished their last fixture Saturday. I’ve really enjoyed this on 2 levels. Personally racing the courses, reminding me of how much I enjoyed XC as a child, how hard I found it. Using the races as early training stimulus has been a great way of providing a challenge / sense of interest to training. The second level has been the Juniors. They have performed brilliantly, in terms of how they have raced, behaved, supported one another and made me feel incredibly proud to be associated with them as a group. As a small club, with 4-5 runners across all the age groups (and only 1 race where we had 2 runners in it) the juniors have a vastly different experience to the larger, more established XC clubs. This means warming up alone, less support on the course and less support in race with team mates. In spite of this they have performed incredibly well and are laying the foundations for many others to come through year after year. This weekend the strength each showed in finishing was a joy to behold.
A new T from the wonderful old grizzled-man group on Strava. Whilst not the most comfortable T for me to run in, I love the sentiment and will be more than happy to wear this.
Suunto has developed a new piece of software that measures HRV in real time to show the level you are working at, on that particular day for that particular workout to gauge what you actual effort is. I’m happily watching what it tells me and hoping that after I’ve built up a few weeks of training I’ll have a far greater understanding and use case established.
BreatheToMove 