K was out running first thing, and when she came home after 35 minutes complaining about the arctic weather I was half hoping she'd cash in her shopping passout and disappear off to Harrogate to allow me an excuse not to go out.
In the end she decided that she really needs a full day at it so at 12 o'clock I was donning hat, gloves, jacket and buff to head out. I'd no idea what I was going to do, other than the fact it wasn't going to be another 5 mile Halton East pootle, so I told K I'd turn round after either 45 mins or an hour.
Things had warmed up by Bolton Abbey, so I decided it was going to be the hour before I turned round. As I ran through Beamsley and over towards Nesfield I was conducting an inner debate on where I should turn back. The "plan" said an hour or 8 miles, but then I thought I've got Auld Lang Syne this weekend, then Garstang 10k the following weekend, so my next long run will be mid-Jan, and that's meant to be 18 miles - and after that it's Brass Monkey and then I'm onto 20 milers - gulp! It was also by now a decent day for weather, I had a day off and would be running in daylight - so it had to be done...
So as I reached Nesfield I decided I'd go to 9 miles and turn. I did actually contemplate going further, but the thing about these out and back runs is that you can easily do an extra mile going out when you're relatively fresh and then regret it at the end. As it was, I felt ok at Ilkley golf club and turned with the watch showing 1:08:39. I had one of my new Torq gels (not bad at all) and set off to chase the guy I'd seen going the other way a few minutes before.
I felt pretty good all the way back to Bolton Abbey, and was repeating my old long-run mantra that the last 2 miles is easy so really you've only got 2 hard miles to go once you're there. The climb up to Halton East wasn't too bad, and I even felt frisky enough to throw in a couple of faster miles at the end to end up with a slightly negative split at 2:17:07 - an average pace of 7:37.
I was definitely working harder than the "easy effort" LSR suggests, and I'm not sure what to make of this approach. Is it my route (that's pretty hilly, especially on the way home where you climb 330' in 2 miles), or am I just pushing too hard? Come April I'm going to need to run 26 miles at a faster average pace than I did today, and whilst my average HR % was down at 67% it did hit 155ish at times near the end which is more like 80% of max. I'm also flabbergasted at these people that run 20 milers and do the last hour at marathon pace - that's sub-7m pace for me (I'm still not sure whether the target's 3:15 or sub-3 - but that's for another entry!) and there's no way I could contemplate that just now. I wonder if I need a flatter route for my long runs? Toying with the idea of driving over to Ilkley on some of my Friday afternoons off and running down towards Pool and Arthington - busy, boring but flat!
No comments:
Post a Comment