April Marathon Month

[ladyrunner]

Just home from a tough 10 mile walking session on a brilliantly sunny and warm day.

I met up with a friend from 20 years ago who was also a race walker turned runner, but now she has decided to try some walking again and has also entered the English Race Walking Champs 20K race on the 1st May. She will be using this race to attempt to get a qualifying time to enable her to compete in the Olympic Games Course Trial 20k event on 31st May. The qualifying time has been set at 2 hours for both men and women. This is a challenging time for women inparticular as a good club standard female walker would probably complete this distance in 2hr0-5mins. I think this Course Trial race is possibly going to turn into a big international event with walkers from all over Europe turning up to try out the course ahead of 2012.

So back to our session today. We set off on the road making good pace, I think approximately 9 minute miles. At 5 miles we returned off road along the Down Link Path, which is flat with a gravel surface. Our pace dropped to 10:30 minute miles. We then finished off by doing a 2 mile lap around Shoreham Airport at a quicker pace. During the last mile I could feel my legs were tired from the marathon but I kept pushing the pace until the finish. We clocked 10 miles in 1 hr 41 minutes. A pleasing return to walking training and I am feeling very happy with how my body is recovering after the marathon 9 days ago. I'm confident that it due to the run/walk techinic that I practised.