Well, I can still feel the exertions of the weekend, but today it's back to it starting off with the Two Hundred Sit-ups Programme. I am just starting week 5 of this. The idea is that you build up the reps and at the end of week 6 you should be able to manage 200 consecutive sit-ups. Yeah right, seems a bit of a tall order, but the programme has steadily advanced from screaming agony to reach even ten sit-ups to where I am now, so it obviously is doing some good! Anyway, this morning I completed a total of 260 over 5 reps. Phew.

Next up it's time for a run. Planned just for 3 miles as I need to let my legs recover from the half marathon. My next run is a 15km trail run on 2nd October, so I am looking to just keep everything moving until then.

Also I have my eye on the long term training plan, and so the remainder of 2010 is going to be all about building distance - base training, you might call it. This is to be done with a low heart rate. The theory is that this teaches your body to become better at burning fat - important over the longer distances. So it's aiming to not go above 70% on these runs. Even for me it can be hard remembering to go that slow - so the beeping from the 405 is very helpful!


Well, it turned out to be quite difficult to keep my heart rate down, as it was much hotter out than it looked! Really sweating a lot and, in fairness, it is a pretty undulating route. The Garmin info on Heart Rate percentages is not right - they must use a different calculation, although the BPM is right. Anyway, my HR was higher than planned but still fairly low so I'm not unhappy. My legs felt okay, although as heavy as lead when I stopped!

What amazed me was that about one mile in to this run I spotted a cat on a wall eying up a little bird in the hedgerow, and it was my Carrera! They say Tom cats can have a fairly large territory - they ain't wrong. He legged it at first and then recognised me so came for a quick cuddle before I carried on!