Gym-tastic

I joined a new gym last week and finally got to go to it on Friday afternoon after work. It is in between my home and work place (which is what made me go in initially to see what the facilities were like) and the bonus was that it is open for 24 hours, has a sauna, steam room, aromatherapy room... loads and loads of equipment (I'm talking about 20 - 25 treadmills, the same amount of bikes/elliptical striders etc etc) and only costs £19.99 a month. You can't fall off for that price, can you?
So, on Friday I went with the intention of doing 30 minutes rowing and was very ashamed to only manage 10 minutes due to lack of fitness. The sauna is the hottest I've ever been in at 95 degrees too! I went again yesterday and finally managed the 30 minutes of rowing, but I had to put the machine down to level 6 to do it. The sauna was so hot afterwards that I had to sit on the floor in order to get the full 15 minutes done. Well, you have to start somewhere don't you?

Speaking of starting somewhere, my mam mentioned yesterday that she was thinking of starting up running again. Imagine her surprise when I rang her this morning and ordered her into her trainers as I was on my way over. She did great and got to her first mile after 2 years of not running in just under 17 minutes. My new Suunto didn't show the same mileage on the second half mile as her so I had to keep going for another 20 seconds or so!!! My knee was a bit sore on the running sections, but that is probably because I also ran/walked yesterday too. I was chuffed yesterday actually, as I managed to do the first 5 minutes completely pain free, although the second half of the run was much more niggly! I was very pleased to see that the running was pretty fast (for me) though at sub 9mm pace for quite a bit of it. :-)

I'm determined to start getting a bit faster, so welcome any small gains I can get. My issue at the moment is, I am thinking it is highly likely I'm going to have to defer my 24 hour race to next year as I can't see my knee improving to such a level it will be ok in only 5 weeks time. I'm holding off the decision until next week. If I have to defer, it will hopefully just give me more time to increase my speed and maybe I could train for a marathon PB in Venice which is the end of October. After all, that could all help with the ultra running, couldn't it?

And, after watching a programme about juicing, Graeme and I have decided to give it a go. I wanted to do it for breakfast, but Graeme wants to do the 10 day juicing thing. I'll see how I feel. We both need to lose a bit of weight (incurred due to not being able to train enough), so it will maybe kick start that!