Back to the drawing board.

No posts for a few weeks, so here's a bit of a summary.

After a slowish 3k walk at Aberfeldie, the back tightened up again, so easy training for a few weeks. This is a real pain in the butt.

Tried to make it up in the gym. On the bike, I did a speed session consisting of 1 minute easy, 1 hard, 2 easy, 2 hard, 2 easy, 3 hard, 2 easy, 4 hard, 2 easy, 5 hard, 2 easy, 4 hard, 2 easy, 3 hard, 2 easy, 2 hard, 2 easy, 1 hard, 2 easy. This is a killer session, of course it depends on your intensity, you basically tailor it to your ability. The idea is to get through the session, so don't blow up on the first few.

In the following days I dropped in a few light runs of 20-30 minutes. Early last week I joined the group for a Tuesday session without knowing what was on the program - it was their 'special' - 6x1500 around the top end of Princes Park with a jogged 300m break. It's more like 1600 metres and if you don't really pace yourself you just will not get through the session.

Having not done any speed for three weeks, I got through three. But even that was good.

The following Saturday, the 2k walk was a real struggle for 8:35.

Then, the night before last, I finally got back into the swing of things again with three laps of Princes Park, the first easy, the second with two surges of about 1k each, and the third with three surges of about 700m each. Good strong, very hard session.

Dogs and beaches.

After yet another back attack, it was necessary to take a couple of days off work, away from the computer, out of the chair, and try and get it right.

Three days at the beach helped. Lying in the sun, a little gentle walking and swimming. Perfect weather helped. Got a little sunburnt, had a picnic on the beach - waldorf salad, hardboiled eggs, fresh rye bread - and generally took it easy.

The dogs love the beach to bits. When we walk, Goldie is OK with other dogs and Billy barely glances at them. However, once we sit on the sand, Goldie immediately regards it as 'our' territory and barks madly at passing dogs. Billy digs a hole, sending sand in all directions, and then sits himself in the cooler sand below.