2 Day update

I thought I'd add a couple of photos showing the harshest most arid country I have ever been and probably never experience again. The picture showing a track, is a very flat 2.5 km dirt/sand road that I use to train on a few months ago, the second photo is of my digital thermometer. If you take notice of the display you will see what I mean by harsh. It is reading 53 degrees and 9% hunidity at 8:45am. I use to run this track a few times a week, trying to achieve at least 2 laps, which was the most difficult 5k I have ever done. The air was so dry and the heat so extreme I didn't even contemplate running until after 7:30 pm. The day this temp was recorded, ambient temp got to about 56-57 degrees Celcius and out in direct sunlight approx 62-65. This is actually the friendly place of Iraq in Mid July (Summer), I now understand why there aren't so many endurance athletes coming from there, excluding the obvious reasons of course.
















19 Dec 05

I woke up feeling pretty good and decided to go to the pool, on the way there I realised I forgot my watch which annoyed me. I hate doing anything exercise related without something to measure your performance by, however it was getting hot so I continued to the pool. I didn't complete a range of distances really, just praticed technique and trying to breath on both side without swallowing half the pool. I swam for a total of about 45 mins, in this I included some work with the kick board and some water running which felt good.

That afternoon I rode the bike trainer for twenty minutes, and took one of the dogs for a slow walk. I wore the garmin and walked 2.2km in 32 minutes, which is double the distance I walked a few days ago at 2min per Km faster, so there is progress.

20 Dec 05

Today was pretty slack, I didn't do anything all day and decided to go to the Gym about 530 pm.
I was reading Lulu's Blog and she said that she is doing some cross training. She mentioned how she done a session on the elliptical training, a machine I totally forgot about, so I decided to give it a go. I done 25 minutes in the forward direction and 5 minutes in reverse. This was a great workout for my legs, the no impact feature is great. I was planning to do this for the next week, before my Gym membership runs out on the 29th Dec, but the gym has decided to close for renovations until the 9 Jan. Tomorrow is the last day it is open so I will do a session tomorrow. They have said that they are adding a week onto everyones memberships to compensate this and we are allowed to go to another one of there gyms at no cost. I may have to look at this option if I want to make my running debut on New years eve or New years day.