Hard Work

This week has been hard going. Ran 6 miles on Monday at 9.14 mm pace and then on Thursday evening did hill reps with Kings Heath. This seemed to be ok to start with (even though my wife told me I was mad to go out there running), but the wind and rain gradually picked up during the evening, so that the grass we were running on (a fairly wide central reservation of a dual carriageway) became more slippy and squelchy as we went on. At one stage I thought that we might have to run on pavement as I did (micro) slip a bit going down hill, but we managed to get through it and finish off without any damage done. 

So I ended up doing 7.7 miles at a ridiculously slow pace: the hill reps themselves were fine, and good for me, but it felt like which ever way we ended up running, the wind seemed to be against us! So by the time I got home, (after an hour and a half of freezing rain) I was glad to get into the shower... ending up with chilblains..... so felt like hard work!

Cannon Hill Park

And then today. Saturday morning. Briefly thought about doing Parkrun, for about 5 seconds, before curling up in bed. Legs felt stiff from the hill reps and I really wasn't feeling it. However, my wife kicked me out of the door, telling me it was a lovely day. And it was. Beautiful. Again, it was cold and I thought that I would take it easy, as I was feeling stiff and tired (work Christmas do on Friday evening didn't help). Did a familiar local 6.1 mile route round Kings Heath and Cannon Hill Park in some lovely (cold) weather. I was really surprised to find that half way round I was slightly quicker than normal, which encouraged me to keep going, even up Cartland Road (a fairly steep incline lasting approx 0.5 miles)... to end up getting home in 55:15 at 8.58 min/mile..... one of my quickest runs at that distance! I know this doesn't really bear comparison with most people who run, but my target for 10k for next year is getting under 55 mins, so I am reasonably hopeful I can do this!