Do or Do Not, There is no try. The torture continues…

“It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.”

-Seneca

13 days till the 2017 Percy Pud 10k

55 days till the 2017 Brass Monkey half marathon

Continuing on from the last update, I mentioned I was about to do the thing Dave said I wouldn’t be, speed sessions on consecutive days.  I had decided to play with very low carbohydrate eating to lose the excess 12 lbs of weight. Only carbing up to train.  So Tuesday morning I ate enough to fuel the 8 x 3 min effort/2 min recovery pace but then got watching a film meaning I finally left 1 hr later than I planned. Shouldn’t make a difference eh?  Yep, it did.  At the end of the 20 min easy pace warm up I felt dizzy and under fuelled.  This meant not doing the planned session, running another 20 min run back home.  Silly, schoolboy error.  

I knew I had to then do the Tuesday session on the Wednesday instead. It meant with the club speed endurance session  Thursday I was still doing hard efforts on consecutive days. After doing the 20 min easy again I ran the session up the TPT from Deepcar to oxspring and back.  Uphill and into an headwind on the way down was hard but it meant the 2nd 4x 3min efforts were downhill and with the wind pushing me. Another 20 min easy to get the effort out of the tired legs.   Great 11miles in the autumn sun. 

Thursday brought the rain and then the hail in the afternoon.  Not great as I knew I needed to go to the club session that night. Thankfully, the weather abated but the temperature then dipped. The session it’s self was brutal.  750m/1500m/750m/750m with 3 x 100m with 30 sec rest between sprints on the end of each rep.  The lack of rest time between was what made it brutal.  Friday meant easy before the start of the race weekend.  
As hillsborough parkrun event director I after say it’s a run not a race but still I was blasting as hard as possible pacing myself off others and trying to beat them over the finish.  Bit like a race  😂.  It was all about the time really.  My PB at Hillsborough is 18:05 but I know I’m not back at that level yet so I hoped for 18:30ish.  Starting off well and trying to maintain this I hit the middle of the 3rd of 3 laps and seemed to struggle because of all the recent speed efforts. Hitting the last climb I found some energy  and knowing it was all down from here pushed through the finish in 18:51.  I was a little dissapointed as I expected faster. Talking to a few people after we all seemed 30-15 seconds slower than expected so maybe I could take solace from this. The results also revealed not many at the sharp end were anywhere near PB’s or recent results so was I being harsh on myself?  Probably. 

A 5mile recovery followed ready for Sundays fun and games at the 3rd South Yorkshire xc season fixture at a muddy Cannon Hall.  Seperate report HERE
Anyway, onwards I go with less than a fortnight till the Percy Pud so I will say

Bye For Now. 

You can still vote for this blog in the 2017 Running Award community blog section HERE

 “There are many challenges to long distance running, but one of the greatest is the question of where to put one’s house keys.”

-Gabrielle Zevin