Hills, harbours & HUGE piles of veggies!

Back at the boyfriend's for a couple of days (I do go to my own home sometimes too, I promise!) so I get to run in that awesome park with the strength-training machines! I kicked off today with an early-morning 4km of hills that ended in that beautiful park, where I spent some glorious time running between all the different machines and generally pushing as hard as I could.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the idea of 'pushing yourself'. I have a habit of doing workouts that are hard but not that hard - I'll push my distance on long runs, yeah, that's always been my easy way of upping my effort, but I rarely really push it in speedwork or on the hills. I'll work harder, yes, but only a bit harder. 

I was reading this post earlier from Shut Up & Run, and a big part of its message is: it's going to be hard. It's supposed to be hard. If it doesn't really feel hard, you're not trying enough. I think this hugely applies to my running - I need to start really working. I need to start workouts without the feeling that I can absolutely definitely do them. 

So starting tomorrow, I'm doing a workout that will really push me - speed intervals, but a lot more of them than I've ever done. When I do speed, I do 1km speed pyramids - 100m at each speed, increasing by 0.2km/h every time. But I'll usually only do two, or three at the most. Tomorrow the goal is five.

It might kill me. But sure that's the point, right? ;)

On a much happier note, I've decided that studying on a bed is the absolute best way to do it.

And today I made dinner with an absolute heap of vegetables. Those are fairly big plates but it's piled with carrots and broccoli - I split one massive head of broccoli down the middle and we had half each, plus I think four large carrots between the two of us. That's a chicken breast at the side - I have access to an oven here so I finally got to bake it the way I like! Baking chicken breasts is great because they're always super tender and tasty, but it also adds absolutely nothing to them the way I do it, literally the only thing I have to put on them is a tablespoon of water. Next time I have an oven I might write about how to make it - it's really basic but I like it so why not? :P

We ended the day with a trip to the pier to look at the lights - I love the Dublin coast. This was taken peeking over the harbour wall.

Tomorrow will be my weekly workout recap :) See you then!