Spot the difference

I think I should explain some of the things I said in my last entry. Firstly, allright, 8:23 pace isn’t that bad, and maybe I shouldn’t have felt like I had completely stunk up the place. It was just that I had intended to do a brisk 5 miler, and as soon as I hit the first slight uphill section I had to slow down a lot and never managed to increase the pace afterwards. Secondly, the perceived effort for that pace was way too high. If I run 8:23, I should be comfortable with that for a long while. Instead I felt like I was breaking a new speed record, I was completely knackered and exhausted by the time I got back home. That’s why I thought of it as a bad day,
It’s funny how differently you can feel just two days later though. I did my planned 12 miles this morning, and ran them on cruise-control, neither speeding a lot nor running particularly slow, and when I got home, I checked my time and was very pleasantly surprised to see that only 1:35 hrs had passed. That’s really fast for me. Just half a year ago, a cruise-control run would have been at around 8:30 pace, and if I wanted to do 8:00 I would really have to push myself. Now apparently I can cruise along at sub 8:00 (at least when I’m not having on off day). Maybe it was the rest day yesterday that made the difference, or maybe it’s just one of those things that you can’t really control, some days are good and some days are bad. For what it’s worth, I feel quite stiff now, though.
The weather yesterday was brutal btw, they didn’t exaggerate when they announced gale force winds, and running would have been completely out of question. Today was much nicer, a bit chilly (5 degrees – that’s Celsius of course, about 41 Fahrenheit), but little wind and I nearly managed to squeeze my run between two bouts of rain. I got a bit wet after 2 miles, but the last 8 miles were run in glorious sunshine. Now it’s raining again – that’s Irish weather for you, I suppose.

12 Nov, 12 miles, 1:35, 7:55 pace