Madrid minus 7 weeks.

[Riazor Blue]

This week is about building mileage and increasing my speed a little. I am aiming to run everything apart from the long runs at 5 minutes per kilometer or faster. Whether this is a good idea or not only time will tell. Revising the last 2 months of training I have done some good sessions, I'm pretty confidant to run in Vigo at around 1h 30 pace for the half marathon. The series I have been doing do seem to have made a difference as to what pace is comfortable.
I'm now frightened of blowing up in Madrid. Between now and April 26th I want to concentrate on my pace a bit more. I think that the series have been useful, and I intend to carry on with some of the longer distances for the rest of this month, but I think that I need more experience of running distances at an increased pace. Not that I'm talking about radical increases. On the non series days, something like 5 min per Km on 15Km runs, 4'45 on 10Km and 4'15 on 8km runs. Most of the runs now are going to be longer distances so I'm hoping to condition myself to these higher speeds.

Having said all that on Monday I done 13.5Km in 1h 3m which is about 4'42 pace. That pace feels very comfortable to me, well, at that distance anyway. I ran this one at night, starting at about 10.00 PM. It surprised me how many ladies were out running at this time. During the daytime I hardly see any women running, maybe one or two. At night, possibly 10 or so. I know it doesn't sound many to those in the UK, but running is 85% male here in Spain.

(With this 'imbalance', any half decent club lady in the UK could be up there in the prizes over here. There's prize money at stake in nearly all the races in Spain).

Yesterday I missed out on my run as I had to take the girlfriend to the masseur, and then it was Juventus-Deportivo. This means that today will be a double session.

I have been out this morning at 6.30 to see how the other half live. It's actually quite tough running at that time of day. I'm not sure that I'll get used to it (especially having to hold the bowels firm for the last kilometer). 10km this morning, just before it started to pour down with rain. I completed that in 48'34". Perhaps a 3000m series session tonight.

One task I must try and do this week is book a hotel in Madrid, if I leave things much longer I'll be sleeping in Antonio's bathroom !!!