I am currently chilling on the sofa with a cup of tea and watching the Olympics on TV, a perfect way to spend my day off which just happens to come after race day and an afternoon of music and drinks!
So where did I leave you....
Thursday - Rest Day:
I also had a half day at work as we were going to Rob's Uncles 70th Birthday Party. It was an extremely fun night with delicious Indian take away and free flowing wine.. in fact it was mentioned that people believe that they actually have wine flowing from their taps instead of water!
Friday - Short Run:
Surprisingly I actually woke up feeling much better than I expected after the night before, however as both I and Rob had the day off we took it easy and enjoyed chilling. So I went for my run early evening. I ran 30 minutes at an average pace of 7:06, Average HR of 173 and completed 4.23km.
Saturday - Extra short run to keep the legs loose before Race Day
I spent most of Saturday also chilling out after instructions from Richard to take the day easy. I did however pop out in the morning for a short easy run to keep the muscles mobile. I went 2.7k in 19 minutes and averaged 7:01 pace and 165 HR.
Sunday - Regents Park 10K
The alarm went off at 6am, I felt excited and for once at such an early time on a Sunday got straight out of bed and got dressed. (Another first for me I had got all of my stuff ready the night before!) We had to drive to Hatfield as out of the two stations in my home town one didn't start early enough and the other was bus replacement. We got the train to Finsbury Park and then the bus to Camden before walking to Regents Park.
After having the usual runners toilet break, and getting our race packs we bumped into Rob, another runner we had met at Ware 10. He was hoping to go sub 70 minutes so we placed ourselves near the back and waited our turn to start moving forward.
I went over the start line and started my watch, only to realise after about 15 seconds that I had managed to put it on race mode (racing my last 5k effort) so had to stop it change the settings and restart it. I was only about 70 meters or so from the start line but it annoyed me as it was important for me to get my watch to have the correct distance and time for this 10K race in which I hoped to be getting an official PB.
The course is 3 laps around Regents Park, you are able to stay on path the whole way round which suits me perfectly as I don't like to run on grass. It is classed as an undulating course, but it is really weird because it had 2 or 3 noticeable declines, but I never really felt like I was inclining, or at least not to the extent of the declines. So all in all not flat but certainly not hard.
So I was watching my HR constantly and it was rising very quickly, hardly surprising with the heat and humidity, but more importantly the fact I did the 1st KM in 6:32 HR 168. I knew it was far too fast and I was shouting at myself to slow down, I told Rob to go on as I needed to slow down or I would burn out and didn't want to slow him down so he didn't get his sub 70.
My 2nd KM was better at 7:11 but by this time my HR was 179, moving into threshold and then my 3rd had sped up again to 6:59 and 4th at 6:46. It didn't matter how much I told myself to slow down, I couldn't, and I knew that it was going to hinder my chances of a PB. I knew I wouldn't be able to finish the race at this continued pace with my HR constantly rising.
Normally I always have trouble for the first 3 - 4 KM as it takes me that long to really get into a flowing pace but then it eases up and I can normally carry on quite comfortably up until 8km. Unfortunately today as the legs started to give by the 4th KM the speed had set me over my Lactate threshold and my legs were already beginning to feel very heavy and tired.
I got to 5K (7:14 186) and new it had been a PB, which was extremely stupid on my part as I still had another 5K to go, and now it was such an effort to lift the legs. I had to walk for a bit, which was fine to steady my HR but didnt do anything to my led weighted legs.
Up until this point (new friend) Rob and I had been chasing each others tails, where I had run the whole 5k, he had been using the walk/run method. He would go past me whilst running at a faster speed, however my consistent run meant I ran past him whilst he walked. But this had taken its toll, we walked for a bit together and then off we went again at our own individual paces.
I slowed down considerably in the second half of the race as I had to keep stopping to walk a bit, my legs were so heavy I just couldnt get them to keep running.
6 - 8:32 175,
7 - 7:48 176,
8 - 8:39 172.
I had managed to get to 8km by the hour, and it was at this point I worked out that I could get sub 1:15:00, it was also at this point that (and I think that sun stroke played a major part in my foolish decision) I decided to zig zag across the course so that my watch could make up the 70 odd meters I had missed at the beginning of the course when I had had to re start it. In my head I was thinking I wanted my watch to register the whole 10KM because otherwise Strava would not class it as a PB..
I also remembered I had brought an ISOGEL with me, I had intended on using it when I ran my perfect race, with negative split and would want it about 7KM so I could start speeding up over the last 3... I took it now hoping above all hope it would perform magic and help get me through the last 2 km in as fast as I could... it seemed to do the trick as I ran 9th km in 7:48 and my final km in 6:43.
5KM - 34:54
10KM - 1:14:23
My official Race time was 1:15:00
Either way it was a PB and I am happy with it.
Fiance Rob - finished in 46:20
New Friend Rob - finished in 1:13:14
So there we are outside the festival, we had a dilemma, we didn't want to get rid of it all, but didn't want to miss the fun happening inside the grounds. So Rob ran over to pound stretcher and picked up some plastic jugs, and we emptied everything into jugs, and taking a couple of trips made our way into find our friends.
Much Love
FBB
xxx
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