What a fine start to 2012 – 3 good runs this week; 10 miles on Monday, 5.3 miles interval training on Wednesday and 12 miles today.
Good run on Monday at a good pace with loads and loads of people out in Bushy Park walking on the last day off for Christmas. And yes some rather foolish people taking very close-up (i.e. getting physically close) photos of large stag with giant antlers – not a wise move. Great run last night doing interval work – 1.5 mile warm-up, 6 sets of 1/4 fast and 1/4 back recovery and 1 mile cool down. Today’s run not good though – changed the days around with the interval run and not enough recovery time between. Legs heavy from the run last night but still got off to a good start. Strong winds all over the UK right now (see BBC News) and they managed to be blowing against me for the full 12 miles – a pretty amazing feat given that I ran back along the same route. Very very hard running into strong and cold wind. Then to top it off it starting raining heavily and then came the hail stones – what fun. Not big ones, but you could feel them. About 5 solid minutes of them – not much fun. Pace took a big hit with the wind and then once pace starts to drop off, I can’t pick it back up. My good old Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS watch allows me to track average pace throughout the runs – and it’s amazing see it drop off like it did. Today’s started at 7:45 per mile, then got up to about 7:52 per mile at 5 miles – so bang on my target pace. Then the bad weather hit and dropped to 8:00 quickly and then 8:10 and then right down to 8:40 at one point – rubbish. Managed to pick up again with the faster finishes I like doing.
Lessons learnt today…
- Don’t do an interval run the day before a long run.
- Leave at least one clear rest day between hard runs.
- Pray for a non-windy day (or move somewhere hot and sunny by the beach).
And yes a very good job I did decide – literally last minute – to take the waterproof running jacket with me today.
