Wednesday off

Making the most of Christmas time by having a well-deserved day off work today. Only going back on Monday so the prospect of a nice, long weekend is brilliant and cheering me up immensely.

I set out on the Maisons Laffitte town circuit which I used to do regularly when I was training for the marathon. Since I've been attending the club sessions on Tuesday and Thursday nights, I've tended to run this route a lot less so it was quite a pleasure to go out and blast this one today.

I left the house just after 8:00 am and it was a really foggy day with visibility down to 400 metres. It was just beginning to get light so I left the headlamp in the drawer and set off. Temperature was about 5°C so ideal weather for running.

The legs felt great from the start. I could tell that my stride lengths were long and that the pace was going easily. I felt fantastic and all of the recent stress from work began to leave me. I went through 2km in 8:13 and then maintained the pace through the park, leaving the park in 26:31.

I began to feel that I could now beat my PB at this point as I thought that my best was somewhere around this time and I was still feeling strong. I then forgot about the time as I ran the next 2 - 3 km and jsut enjoyed it, pushing up the hills through town and along the roads, thinking about the race this weekend.

At 10km, I looked at my watch again: 40:48, now I knew that I would beat my PB and ran strongly over the last kilometre to finish the course in 44:43 for 11.1 km or 4:02 per km. Beat the previous record by 30 seconds: amazing !!

What a way to end the year !