Monday off

To celebrate my day off this morning, I decided to make the most of Laurence being at school in order to go for a short run.

All my training recently has been based on increasing the mileage, and even the club sessions have been focused on general muscle building rather than any speedwork. It was time to rectify this and head back out on a short run to Chateau du Val. This route is just over 7 km in total and used to be one of my standard training routes before I started to train over longer distances.

I set off this morning under a very overcast sky. It had been raining during the night and the ground was soaked. I decided that I would try and run the course fast but not so fast as to bust a gut in the process. It wasn't to try and set a new PB but just to ran at a faster pace than the usual endurance pace of around 4:30 per km.

I ran up the hill towards the forest in 4:28 and I could feel the fatigue in my legs. This is the fourth day running non-stop now and I'm not used to the intensity. My thighs were sore and tired so all thoughts of blasting the whole course disappeared then. Having decided this, I settled into an easy but consistent rhythm, running at around 4:10 pace and every now and then accelerating a little. The following kilometres went by then in 4:14, 4:05, 4:10, 4:12, 4:06, 4:02. Sprint for home and all up in 29:38 - second best time ever. So despite the tiredness and not trying hard, I am still improving on my times set just under a year ago. This is really encouraging and a big boost to my morale.

To celebrate, I went mountain biking with Laurence this afternoon. Came off the bike 3 times in the mud and landed heavily on my thigh in the last accident. Laurence was well amused though. She then showed me up for my lack of bike training by leaving me on the flat on the way home. My legs couldn't take any more. Having second thoughts about the triathlon on Saturday but will do it anyway.