It has been another week of intensive training. I ran 6 times for a total of 94.7km.
The week started with an easy recovery run on Monday. 10.5km at 4:44. It was a very warm morning. I was wearing my lighter winter kit and it was too hot for that too. The temperatures are very unpredictable these days so I bought a handy thermometer that will tell me each morning what I should wear before heading out.
Tuesday the real training started with a nice set of intervals. After the warm up I did five 4′ at a pace of 3:40 with 4′ rest in between. It was really a killer day, but I managed to do them with Swiss watch precision. I finished with a long cool down and after a total of 13k I was home ready for some stretching. It is days like these that really test my hip, Achilles tendon and right foot (my 3 weak spots).
Luckily I discovered the power of the slow recovery runs which I always avoided (big mistake) and Wednesday I did a slow 10k run and then felt like new.
So much so that on Thursday I decided to try and beat my 5k PB. As I was supposed to run 20′ at a fast pace (above 162BPM) I decided to try and do a PB, just for fun.
I did a 3k warm up and then did 5k keeping the heart above 162 which meant running between 3:30 and 3:40. It was a lot of fun, but left me all broken to pieces at the end. 17:57 to run 5k, not bad considering it was so early in the morning I was still half asleep. I did an extra 1k cool down and then home to check if I had done the PB. Unfortunately I did not manage to by less than 10 seconds.
Friday I took it easy to recover from the day before and ran 14km at 4:45. My legs were happy at the end.
Saturday I could not do the long run as it was raining too much (alternating with some snow) and I did not feel running wet for 3 hours. I regretted it straight away as it stopped raining as soon as I had breakfast, the kind of breakfast you cannot run afterwards, too much milk.
So I waited until Sunday and went out with the plan to do 42k. Armed with 3 gels and a handheld bottle I went to Kingston and then followed the river up to Hammersmith bridge until I had run 21k, then turned around and went back. Unfortunately I took a shortcut and got home after 38km. I was really tired. The run started very painfully from the beginning with my legs hurting from the first km and got even more tiring because of all the mud and the wind. Strangely it felt like running against the wind in any direction I was going! It was a good day anyway, very challenging but fun. I was happy to be home at the end. Final result: 38km at an average pace of 4:56 min/km. I was so tired on Sunday that I went to sleep at 10pm.
Have fun!