Don't Guess it, Test It

Monday was rather mundane, just another 10 mile run. The legs felt heavy after Sunday’s long run, but I was pleasantly surprised by the low HR; If I go by pace for HR, it was my best training run since Connemara.

On Tuesday morning I did a test run; I wanted to find out if I would be able to pace a 40 minutes 10k on Saturday. To be honest, I fully expected the answer to be “no”, but gave it a try anyway. The original idea was to run 2 miles at a good pace and see what the result was, but when it was windy on Monday evening I decided to run 2 separate sections, one in each direction, to make sure the wind would not have much influence on the test.  I just made that sound much more complicated than it was, basically I ran one fast mile in one direction and 2 in the other, separated by one easy mile, with the usual warm up and cool down on either end. The result was a mile at 6:23 pace and 2 miles at 6:20 pace, so I guess the answer is that I should indeed be able to pace a 40 minutes 10k on Saturday.

I felt surprisingly good on Wednesday morning, so I pushed a little bit harder and the pace was a little bit quicker than usual, though it was all very controlled.

Despite being able to run quicker than expected, I'm actually not feeling 100% at the moment, I had a sore throat on Tuesday and just did not feel all that great throughout the day. I don’t know if it was a misbehaving A/C at work (it was absolutely freezing all day in the office) or if I got a touch of whatever Shea had last week (he missed school on Friday), but as long as it doesn't get any worse than it is right now I’ll just ignore it.

9 Sep

10 miles, 1:18:10, 7:49 pace, HR 139

10 Sep

8 miles, 58:43, 7:20 pace, HR 151
     incl. 1 mile @ 6:23 (HR 163), 2 miles @ 6:20 (HR 170)

11 Sep

12 miles, 1:29:17, 7:26 pace, HR 150