The last 3 weeks have seen my training numbers fall away somewhat. A fantastic family holiday in Spain, that saw me get out for 4 runs, between 30 and 40 minutes and in the pool every day. No real structured stuff at all, just trying to avoid being de-bagged by wheezy junior. The problem is that my relaxed attitude carried on into the following week as well. However, I kept the #summerrunning campaign going, although I only managed 2 bike sessions. A great 2 hour ride with a 1 hour tt effort in the middle and a bimbling and terribly unstructured turbo set. Grrr.....Anyway, the culmination of last week was a 5km tt run at the Bushy park run. Since the Forestman I have put together my most consistent run training in a very long time and I wanted to see where I stood despite only a few speed and interval sessions. It was a particularly busy morning with over 700 starters, so I placed myself in the middle and waited for the off. These can be really tricky to pace right, especially if you're not quite sure what your fitness state is, with it being a very fine line between pacing it perfectly or blowing up horribly in the last kilometer, so I decided to start a bit more conservatively and work my way through the field.
I had a great run. I haven't enjoyed myself like that in a long time, picking people off as I got my heart rate up and those in front started to tail off. I even managed to out-sprint another chap in the last 200 metres; I don't think I've done that since 1988! I was realistically expecting something in the region of 20.30-21.00, so to see 19.06 on my watch brought a very big smile to my face. Still a long way to go but very happy. Even more happy when I found out I had come 24th and second in my age group, something that I really was not expecting.
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ReplyDeleteCracking effort on the 5km