The 10K project continues. Saturday night saw a return to my familiar 5 mile circuit around the town. Hubristically I felt that my marathon fitness had returned and I was unable to keep the pace down. But the watch stopped just outside 45 minutes; definite “easy” pace. Happy to have it in the bank though.
Album du jour: Simple Minds,
Live in the City of Light. Not the right length for the run, but a recently dusted-off gem that I hadn’t listened to for ten years, and which took me back another ten.
Alive and Kicking took me into the final mile, and I skipped to
Don’t You Forget About Me for the home straight. Uplifting.
Tuesday morning I ventured out for another 6 hill reps. The second and last reps seem to be the best performances – for the second I’m fresh but warmed up, for the last I have nothing to lose and can empty the tank. I took another half second off the PB on the second rep, then for the last I abandoned my traditional head-down-arse-up posture and adopted a head up, back straight, purposefully striding gait. Probably not traditional for hill climbing (as I’m sure readers can confirm) but this is really just road running on an incline rather than real men’s / women’s grinding up a one in four fell. But the result was another second off the PB, which now stands at a tantalizing 2 mins and 1.5 secs.
Thursday morning was the tempo session, with the plan to run 1.5 miles in the middle at race pace or slightly better. I was very pleased - nay, astounded - to cross the mile in 6:45, and finish the 1.5 in 10:14 – far better than expected.
So it all seems to be doing me good. Not sure I could keep this up all year round though.
The rest of 2010 - between marathons
