Like most evening runs, I found that despite the short day at work, I was still a little tired and not running quite as easily as I hoped. There was probably still some fatigue from yesterday's race which played a part too. This gradually wore off as I ran through the forest, not immediately, as the going was extremely difficult along the horse track to begin with. The lack of rain has meant that the sand is fine and loose and it's like running along a soft sand beach.
Once this section had been negotiated, I picked up speed to 4:20 pace and this is where I remained for the rest of the course. I even picked up a little more speed towards the end, averaging 4:15 over the last 3 kilometres.
12.5 km all up in 54:08 or 4:20 per km average.
The official results for the Paris Versailles are out here. I finished in 211 place out of 17 829 participants and 48 male vet in an official time of 1:05:04. Only 4 women beat me, one of whom was Mireille - grrrh! Bruno ran 5 seconds faster, and so with Fred in front too, I was 4th from the club. Still pleased overall.
2 comments:
You need to do more interval work Jamie. Doesn't make sense that an easy training run is only 18s per km slower than race pace.
You're comparing a 16km race with a huge hill in and a training run over a shorter distance without the hills.
I do need to do some intervals I know. But the Paris-Versailles race was a sort of training run for me in any case. I didn't treat this as a real race.
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