Saturday run

I woke up at 8:00 am at went for our now routine Saturday run to Cora lake with Nick again this morning.

The plan was to take the 15km run easily this morning with the Paris Marathon looming. Only 8 days to go to the big event and I didn't want to take any risks by injuring myself on a training run so close to the race. As it was, when I got up this morning I could feel a slight pull in my right buttock and so I did some stretching exercises to try and relieve this. These stretches only appeared to make the pain worse, so I gave this up as a bad job. The coaches are right that advise to do stretches after a warm-up first. I put my kit on and went for the run instead.

I picked Nick up and we ran into the forest at a leisurely 5:00 per km pace. As we warmed up, the pace picked up too. After 5km we were runing at 4:25 pace and we had to make a conscious effort to slow down. We ran at a steady 4:30 - 4:35 pace for a few more kilometres before slowing down for the last 5km and running these very steadily.

It was cold again this morning with a strong breeze. Hopefully the weather will improve next week as I wouldn't like to run the marathon with a strong wind. Hailstorm this afternoon - could do without this too please ! Stopped at Nick's to pick up 'Once a runner' by John L. Parker which I'm now reading. Really good novel with descriptions of races that I can empathise with.

15km this morning in 1:12. Average pace of 4:50 per kilometre. Fine as last weekend preparation.