Motivation for Fatcats and possibly Fatcat Chumlies.

Top of the saturday to you, I and my cheesy grin greet you and hope you are all in fine fettle. I am off to Howth within the hour, to source fish with the paramour, and to take photos, for I am that lame. I hope I capture the lesser spotted Gay Byrne on film.
A patchy sort of week for me exercise wise I must admit. I only came back from Balmoral on Monday evening and to be quite frank I was banjaxed. Running up mountains has got absolutely nothing to do with easy 10k loops a couple of times a week and as such I feel slightly found out.
I was just saying to the paramour yesterday-after a run ( where I worked on speed blocks, one of the chaps, expert marathon man Don Macgregor gave me some sterling advice) that on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of fitness, I would honestly consider myself to be about 4. This alarmed the poor paramour for if I am 4, he reasoned, then he must surely be zero. How the man landed on zero when it went from 1 to 10 is beyond my ken, but he seems to know his business.
See, I can run for an hour no problem, I can bike for an hour or two, I do weights, I do yoga, I row hard once or twice a week, all of these things are imminently doable, but when faced with running up a mountain last week, I felt really colly wobbled.
On the first day we ran six miles, and though it was tough I did it, and did it quite fine really. On the second day we had a long run and the weather was fierce, the higher we got the colder the sleet and wind, and once we broke through the tree line and out onto the moor. I was struggling and my left lung was still feeling the effects of whatever illness I acquired the previous Tuesday when suddenly I had a eureka moment.
Eureka, I said to my self, this is really fucking unpleasant and I am utterly against it.
So I conferred with my squad leader and he rather graciously let me go back down, albeit by a longer loop by the river, and this chumlies, is where they great recovery kicked in.
Once I was out of the group and once I made it back to the relative shelter of the trees, I pulled my hat down low, popped my music in and stone me, off I set at my own pace and proceeded to poodle along. I poodled along for almost an hour, stopping to go EEEE over some ponies, and made it back to the castle and, more importantly, to the showers, first.
Now I accept that most of the people at Balmoral are all training for the London marathon which is only a few weeks away, so they would be at their peak in terms of fitness levels and long runs, where as I don't even start training for the Dublin until say, May, but still.
The truth is I don't like training in groups. I said it to Finn over coffee that evening-Finn is a terrific runner and therefore not in my group, that running in a group displeased me. I don't like to be told what speed to run, I don't like to chat as I run, although the people there were lovely. I like to listen to music and poodle along gawking at stuff. I like to slow down and speed up at will, I don't like rain, I sure as shit don't like hills.
I am a fucking lazy runner.
The next day we had a recovery run, which was climb up to the top of a hill (walking, single file, bit steep you see) and then run back down and around by the river for a further mile or two. I found the third run easy, and kept to the group, but I couldn't help it, I kept thinking how much more I'd enjoy it if I was alone.
Then we did an hour of pilates and core strengthening which was awesome and then we had a lunch, which was even awesome-er.
I really enjoyed Balmoral, I especially liked talking to Don and John Bryant, who is quite an inspiration. I will use everything I learned there and put it to good use. As soon as April roll to an end I will begin training in earnest. I plan to shave at least half an hour off my marathon time this year.
In the mean time I will pull my finger out and see if I can drag my reluctant corpse higher up the 1 to 10 scale. Even a 6 would do me. My body will complain and it will be loath to leave the comfort zone, but leave it it will.
And so, this week, although it was patchy,

WEdnesday-I ran 10k in the gym, alternating speeds. Finished with half an hour of core pilates as thought by Emma in Balmoral.

Friday, ran for 80 mins, used the park to operate running in blocks to increase speed. I was wreaked on the way home, my legs felt like jelly, so it must be doing something different.

Tomorrow I"m running in the Phoenix park with the chaps. 5 miles.

There you have it for this week. Patchy. But next week will be better. It's time to roll up the sleeves and whip this Fatcat into shape. Anyone else feeling they're just poodling along in the comfort zone?