Maisons Laffitte run

Another busy week in perspective, causing me to miss all of the training runs with the club this week. I've had to programme in my early morning runs again between business travel arrangements just so that I don't lose out on the mileage front.

Left at 7:00 am on the early morning route around Maisons Laffitte park in the dark. I felt good from the outset and was happy to be running since the last training on Sunday. I went through 2 km in 8:31 and felt very easy and comfortable. I wondered how long this would last, but wasn't worried as my main objective was to enjoy myself. I seemed to have too many races planned at the moment: 1 per weekend for the next 3 weekends and I need to go easier on the mid-week training.

I left the park in 27:10 and I knew that this time was one of my best over this course. I had been chasing another runner through some of the streets through the park and was disappointed when he turned off my route before I could catch him.

I relaxed running back through Maisons Laffitte and up to Leader Price where I looked at my watch again: 34:34. I know that it takes under 11 minutes to run back from this point and that my PB for the course was 35:xx so I thought that I'd be in with a chance if I pushed it. So push it I did, clocking a 17.8 km/h running down the hill to the town hall and then a steady 15.5 km/h over the last kilometre back to the house.

45:12 all up for 11.1 km so an average of 4:03 / km. Felt good all of the way round and set a new PB over the course, beating my previous record set in September by 5 seconds. Interesting to note how much faster I finished today compared to the last record run.