The plan for today was to repeat last Wednesday's pyramid session. I felt that it should in theory be easier considering I didn't have the fast finish long run in my legs as I had last week. I was wrong. Actually as I type this, it has occurred to me that the fast finish was done in the morning whereas Monday's long run took place in the evening. Conversely I was doing the session in the morning whereas last week it was the evening, so I guess I had almost an extra 24 hours recovery in total. Or maybe I was just going better last week!
I had planned on going to the track but it would have meant renting a bike & trying to find the bloody thing! I decided it wasn't worth the hassle as I wanted to get the session in before it got too hot. Besides there's a lovely cycle path running along the seafront in Palma which would do nicely. After warming up and causing a cyclist to crash (just before I got onto the cycle path so there shouldn't be a lawsuit!) I set about the first mile. While I was holding 5.30 pace as planned it felt anything but comfortable. Not to worry I thought, just getting warmed up. Onto the 2mile section and things were definitely not going well. Was digging deep enough to maintain the pace and only managed 11.05. Knew at this stage my lofty hopes of doing the entire session at 5.30 pace was beyond me so I headed into to 3 mile section with an open mind. After a bit I looked down and the pace was around 5.45 and I was under serious pressure. And next thing I knew I had hit the lap button at 0.4miles and was jogging. As I contemplated the jog home and pondered if what I had done justified the chocolate milkshake waiting in the fridge as my recovery drink, I had a bit of a brain wave - Ok so I can't maintain 5.30pace so why not knock out a few miles at target marathon pace. Sher why not? Started off nice and relaxed, at what felt like marathon pace. When I looked down I was doing 5.50 miling. Hmm, it felt so much easier that just a few seconds a mile quicker, obviously being more relaxed helped. Although I thought I was at a pace I could maintain for 30 minutes or so, I had slowed to 6 minute miling by the time I hit 3 miles and by 5 miles I had to push on a bit to maintain this pace. Ok so I was going a little faster than my planned marathon pace but I think I still gave myself a timely reminder that even though a pace might feel comfortable it doesn't mean it's not too fast!
Not the toughest session I've ever done, 10 days out might be a good time to kill yourself before a 5 or 10K but I think for what I would have gained by really burying myself, wouldn't have been worth it. As I neared the end of the warm down it dawned on me - it's done! The training's done, happy days!! I'll do some sort of speed work next week just to break up the inevitable tedium but I won't even bring the watch (who am I kidding?) but nothing too hectic. Ok I guess there's just the small matter of the 26.2 miles to go...
Thursday: 2 mile warmup, 1mile (5.30) 2min recovery, 2mile (5.33) 3.5min recovery. 0.4mile (5.44) 2min recovery, 5mile (6.00), 2 mile warm down. 13.3miles total
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