Friday, April 22, 2011

Dreading it

One of the sessions I wasn't looking forward to. I was down for 3 x 2 miles but I didn't have a local 2 mile route mapped out so I reverted to my 3.6km time trial course. So I'd already upsized to 2 and a quarter miles...

It was quite windy and my thought process was that I wanted the benefit of the wind (not my own) for 2 of the 3 efforts. With the wind direction that meant a short warm-up (2km) and a longer warm-down (4km). That would have been the other way round with the wind in the opposite direction. Confused?

I wanted to run at HMP so to run the 3.6km in 12 minutes exactly would be about right. The first one felt fairly comfortable and I was surprised at the time of 11:42 (3:15/km). I decided on 2 minutes recovery of mainly walking whilst thinking "what the hell am I doing here". The start of the second rep and you could notice a big difference running into the wind. Trying to run relaxed but it was a real effort and with the long final stretch to my starting point which arrived in 11:50 (3:17/km). Happy as.

The third rep felt tough for the first couple of minutes but then I started to come good. That continued for most of the effort. Oh for that to happen more often. The final 2 minutes were a bit tougher and I finished with a 11:44 (3:16/km). So slightly slower than the first one but all in all very consistent.

All 3 inside my target. Not sure if that's good or not? I finished up with a 4km warm-down so all up 16.7km for the day in a running time (ignoring recovery) of 1:02:31 (average pace of 3:45/km).

The 3 efforts (10.8km) totalled 35:16 so a tough session. Especially for my lily livered low mileage legs. That pace equates to 32:39 for 10km - albeit with 4 minutes recovery thrown in...

Another good session in the bag. Still not feeling great but it doesn't seem to be hindering my training.

1 comment:

Samurai Running said...

Nice session Matt. Glad to hear I'm not the only one who dreads hard sessions.

I keep telling myself that nobody has ever died from a hard run, but I sure that's no true!