Coasting

It was Saturday, the day before race day, yet I didn't want to let up on my mileage in preparation for the marathon in a couple of months time. I convinced Nick to go for a run too and we met up at his house on the promise that the pace would be very easy and would not have a negative impact on the 10km race the following day.

In fact, when I met up with Nick, he told me that he was only going to run for 5 - 6 km and that he would cut back after starting with me. Despite my text message to Andy the previous day, I'd had no reply so we stopped off at his house on the way and called for him but to no avail. I'm sure he was hiding behind the shutters waiting for us to leave, not wishing to be pushed around another 13 km with us.

Anyway, Nick and I set off very steadily and took it easy to the road to Achères, where Nick headed back through the forest towards home. When I say steadily, it was very easy as we were running at 5:10 pace along the forest paths. I stayed at the same pace after Nick left too, running to Cora and around the lake at a constant 5:15 pace.

There were very few runners around, surprisingly, as the forest has been full of people with good intentions recently, exercising after the Summer holidays. I wasn't bothered as I was thinking to myself about the race the next day and what time I could hope for in my current form. I was worried about Bruno and his pace and my own ability to go under 37 minutes. I decided finally that to beat 38 minutes would be good at the moment and that I mustn't lose sight of the overall objective which is the 3 hour marathon.

Anyway, by the end of the loop, I'd begun to get bored of the plodding rhythm and lengthened my stride a little just to get some good feelings back. I ran up the hill from Cora in 4:50 and then settled into a 4:45 pace until hitting the road in Le Mesnil again. I relaxed again here and increased the pace to 4:30 for the last kilometre. I arrived back in front of the house and took my heartrate : 120 bpm after the last effort so still below 50% of my max frequency. I didn't think that this would impact my race the following day.

15 km all up in 1:17 or an average of 5:06 per km.

P.S. Andy informed me later that he'd run 14k to St Germain and back. A likely story when he'd chosen not to run with us !!