Thursday 21 November 2013

New Year's Trigger


Included in my to-do list for 2014 is running a sub 4-hour marathon in the spring specifically on the 6th of May. I do not start marathon training until January so to keep fit, stay motivated throughout the holiday season and get me going in the New Year I decided to enter a 10k race on the 5th of January 2014 and then train for it over the next seven weeks. This particular race is part of the Regents Park Grand Prix 10k Series held at the beautiful Regents Park in Central London.
Training started three days ago on a cold November morning with a 5-mile easy run. It was a good run. I did have a hard time though keeping the pace down. For my easy runs the pace should be between 9:10 and 9:20 minutes per mile but that morning I felt like letting go and tearing around the route. If there’s one thing I have to remember throughout this training it is this: “Run the slow runs slow so you can run the hard ones hard!!”
Today’s run was a completely different story. I had a tempo run planned – 1 mile warm up followed by four miles at 7:50 – 8:00 minutes per mile and a 1-mile cool down. Tempo runs are hard runs and I usually prefer them to speed work but today’s run took so much effort and energy. First mile after the warm up I was already struggling. I stubbornly refused to slow down. So I puffed and panted through the second and third mile. By the fourth mile I was barely hanging on. The cool down mile was such a relief.
Here’s what the run looked like – 1 mile warm (9:36), 4 miles@8:12, 8:00, 8:02, 8:02 and 1 mile cool down (8:46).
I am still trying to figure out what went wrong or was it just a case of a bad “run” day