Yes it’s that time of the year – pollen season is here – and the associated hayfever for millions of people.

This time of year running presents new challenges – avoiding grass and parks and generally nice outdoors type areas.  Training plans need adjusting and fine tuning to run in more built-up areas and at different times of the day.  The worst time to run is late morning and early afternoon, when the pollen count is generally at its highest.  So an early morning or evening run sound good.

Why then did I ignore this advice today?  And run on empty again (yes I’ve done this before and know it’s not good)!

An early start today and little breakfast, a busy morning in London (for a very enjoyable Digital Leaders Think Tank roundtable session (more on this in a later post) at the top of 30 St. Mary Axe – otherwise known as The Gherkin – with some spectacular views of London – see below) and hot and muggy weather.  Far from ideal conditions to do a 10k run with a decent time.

But it was on the plan so we did it.  Same route as the last couple of 10k training runs – nice and easy, and not much grass along the way.  Times for my 10k training runs so far vary from 44 1/2 minutes to 47 1/2 minutes – almost a 10% difference.  Today was the higher end – just over 47 1/2 minutes.  Rubbish.  But it should have been expected for all the reasons above.  See my earlier posts for some other thoughts on this.

Only just over one week to go until the British 10k.  2 more training runs planned this week and then 3 next.  Planning to leave 1-2 days between the last training run and the actual race.  With a 9:35am start and in central London, not in the parks, it should be a good time to run.

Just need to remember to eat first…!