Heading for The Mall (May)

[ladyrunner]

Hope you enjoyed your "rest" day!

Yes MLCM I did enjoy my rest day. But not until I had done 2 more days of training.

Wednesday: I met up with the steady marathon group for a run on the South Downs. Despite it being a steady run for me I did struggle round the 8.5 mile circuit. By the time we finished at 8:30pm, I was in desperate need of some dinner. 1hr 30mins in total on a damp, foggy and cool evening.

Thursday: I had experienced some leg and hip cramping during the daytime, probably brought on by 5 continuous days of training. Today I wanted to do my interval session on the treadmill which is usually 5 x 1km. I decided I didn't want to skip the session as this week's full training schedule will probably aid my performance on The Mall and anyway next week I am planning on taking it easy. So after a warm up I started my 1km reps. I'd decided to take it easier than usual and see how I felt. I did a comfortable 6:00 for the first rep and each interval after I steadily got a bit quicker. At the end of my 3rd interval I decided that I was only going to do one more. I didn't want to risk injury but felt that I had done enough to make it count. I completed the last interval in 5:39 which is fairly fast, but I held back a little. Warmed down with my hand weights doing 5 minutes of bicep/tricep swings and 3 minutes of shoulder presses whilst walking steady. A well deserved rest tomorrow

Saturday: Double Parkrun - this time without a hangover I met my friends Jo and Joan, plus a new recruit Trevor who I had been meeting up with throughout the winter for long walks. In a race he is usually about 1 minute quicker than me over 10km. We did our first 5k together in 30:02. Then set off with the other 350+ runners for the hard one. Trevor and I set off at a storming pace 6:48 for the first small lap. I managed to hold on to him for the second lap 16:18 - this was my fastest ever large lap 9:30. A quick mental calculation made me aware than if I could continue at my usual pace then I could do what I thought was impossible .... break 26 minutes. At this point with one lap to go Trevor started walking away from me with ease, and I had to knuckle down and keep pushing as hard as I could to try and break 26 minutes, but failing that atleast set a new PB. There was a few tense hours to wait for the email result, but when it did arrive it was very good news. A new PB in 25:59 .... how close was that??