For the first time in 3 and a bit weeks I laced on my running shoes, strapped on my fancy Garmin watch, and hit the road. With a 10km coming up at the end of August in Cornwall (a tough, hilly 10k that could, with the weather we're having, be a mudfest) I felt it was better to try to get back to peak fitness as soon as possible to make the efforts of going sub 45m on such a tough course a possibility - my 42.20 in Richmond seems a long time ago now.
I set off at a steady pace, finding my feet again, enjoying the evening sun and the music in my ears. After about 2km I was feeling good so picked up the pace a little to around 4.50m per km, but after another 1km or so, had to ease up again as it was starting to give me a stitch. After about 4.5km though the pain eased off and I once again started to increase the pace. There were quite a high number of other runners out and about too so it was good to be able to spot someone in the distance and either try and reel them in, or at least use them as a pace marker (albeit one that was a long way away).
After 6.5km I decided to head for home so followed my route back and. My watch showed I finished on 7.3km in 35.52. About 5m per kilometre. Not bad considering it was the first for a while. But I'll need to be up to 4.30 per km if I'm to hit 45m in Cornwall - and that's on a much harder course. But with 29 days left to train, I'm confident it can be done.
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In other news - about half way through Leviathan and I have to say it's rapidly turning into one of the best books I have read in a long time. I'll finish it before I write too much more.
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2 comments:
Good luck in August Dan. I really don't know how you manage to crack the 50 minute mark so regularly. I can only just manage it!
I think the best advice is, first you need to train hard for it; really push yourself to run hard, but only about 5/6km on training runs.
Second, go off at a good pace from the beginning and maintain throughout (as you say on your blog); when going for sub 45 too often I would get to 5k in 24 minutes or something and have left myself too much to do. Have confidence to do the first half in 24minutes and nail the second in 26 etc. - the last km always flies by.
Apart from that it helps that I've fluked long legs through genetics!
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