Day 12 and Day 13 Training and the breaking of the 20 mile barrier!

Tonight, I am pleased with my achievement. Today I broke the 20 mile barrier that has been dogging my progress so far. My legs know it, but I'm well chuffed! Here's how it happened...

Day 12 Training: Tuesday 10th April : 4.01 miles
http://runkeeper.com/user/TheLongPush/activity/80763362

Took the opportunity to get out and do a few miles after work around my Marine Lake training circuit, but by the end of 1 lap I was ready to stop. A good wind was behind me blowing me northwards, but it was tough pushing in to the wind on the promenade. By the end of 1 lap of the figure of 8 circuit I was feeling a bit stiff in the back, so with that and the wind I decided to call it quits for the night. With 6 days at work ahead of me it was always going to be hard to find any more training time this week, so I was working on the adage that any training is better than none. I was right. It wasn't until the following Monday that I got my next chance to get out to train.


Day 13 Training: Monday 16th April : 25.6 miles
Thursday, Friday and Saturday leading up to today saw me and my colleagues working three 12 hour shifts, and if travelling was added to that they were more like 14 hour days. On top of this I was still working till late on the Sunday too! So all in all this probably wasn't the best preparation for a 20 mile plus skate! But the weather forecast was showing that Monday was going to be the only dry day of the week, and on waking up there it was, blue sky, sunshine and barely any wind! Perfect conditions. My distance skate bag was aready packed and ready to go so, instead of driving to a starting point, it was urethane straight onto the pavement outside home and off pushing to the starting point of Sector 1. And so, at the start of Sector 1, I whipped out Camera 1 (Praktica) and made a quick intro video...
 

Sorted. No problem. Pushed off and along the first part of the Coastal Road and then stopped at the next section to try and do some more filming. Some great features on the coast road here, so I figured it would make for some good footage. No sooner had I turned the camera on than "Memory full"! Damn! I've tried changing the SD card on this camera before and it doesn't like ones with too many gig, so turned to camera 2, (Fuji).


For whatever reason (because it gave me no error message) this one wouldn't record any more than 2 seconds at a time! No idea why. Never done that before! Camera 3 (Alba): Forget it! This one was a free gift  and the sound is dreadful, not to mention that it too cuts out all the time as well! Well and truly hacked off at technology farting in my face in such a way (again),  I pushed off and tried to tell myself I wasn't annoyed at yet again, being unable to provide any video footage of a training ride. But I was. Well and truly hacked off about it. Still, a mile down the road it was forgotten and I was just enjoying the day and the progress I was making.

The end of Sector 1 was reached and I stopped for a breather and to check my phone for messages. Pretty soon I was back off along the A565 on route to Tarleton, which I got to at around 12.00 and made this quick vid...

I skated past the end of Sector 2, into the village and stopped outside the library for a sandwich. Found the health centre, close by too, so those should be two good LONG PUSH poster locations when I visit again on a rainy day. I'd been tracking my ride with RunKeeper as usual, but between trying to use the phone camera to make a video and the battery life disappearing before my eyes I thought I had lost it. Only to find that it was there on my Facebook page when I got home! Weird! Good that I got half the info, but dissapointing that the battery life of my phone is so...poor (being diplomatic) that I won't be able to fully map all my distance work on 
Runkeeper.

Propped up outside Tarleton library.

I'd decided, because I had to be back to take one of my cats to the vets, to do Sectors 1 and 2 together and then come back the same way, rather than do 20 miles out and then get public transport back. So, after a buttee and a can of Monster, it was back homeward bound. A slight head wind this time, but nothing to cause any great problems. So basically it was straight back via the same route. Only when I got home and mapped the journey on Google Maps did I find the full distance travelled...25.6 miles. Well and truly beating my 20 mile target and actually reaching my target for the end of April/1st May. In fact my total distance pushed and pumped so far on training is...126.7 miles. So although this is a 100 mile journey over 2 days, the total distance pushed by the end of the ride is going to be pretty impressive. Still, I'm now officially ahead of schedule, but my legs know I've done some miles today. I figure a couple of days off and then a quick 1 lap of my training circuit will be ideal before my next long distance training,  as long as I get the weather to do it.


Next long training ride, whenever that will be, is going to be another 25 miler, but this time from the beginning of Sector 1 to Preston and maybe beyond. I'm hoping to make contact with some familes affected by autism and support services around the Southport to Penwortham and Preston areas. So if you live in that area and you would like to be featured in the training for The Long Push 2012, please get in touch. I'm interested to meet people and hear their experiences with autism and the support or lack of it that you get. This journey is all about raising autism awareness. Please join me along the way.

Chris

Todays route...


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