Just back from London, where I managed to get what turned out to be a fairly brisk 5 miler in along the river (which was supposed to be a recovery run but ended up being a bit quicker than that). I was staying on the south bank, between Vauxhall and Westminster bridges, so ran along to the millennium footbridge by the Tate and came back along the embankment. I had a to do a few yards past the hotel to get 5 in, and was surprised to see the pace had been about 7:15. My HR was pretty consistently in the mid-130's, so wasn't working too hard.
I'm always struck by the lack of interaction from runners along the Thames - up here if you pass someone the least you'll get is a raise of the eyebrows and a wave - in London they're all steely faced and determined looking - maybe it's because they're on their way home from work, maybe it's because they're steely determined city types, or maybe it's because they're all wankers - who knows?
The other thing I'm struck by is people's complete and utter inability to walk in a bloody straight line!!!! Along the south bank it's a procession of weaving pedestrians, with random direction changes and unpredictable veering off from side to side - they'd probably walk about half the distance if they walked straight.
Anyway, after my run I had to go to the House of Lords for some corporate poncing, but it was actually really interesting - we got a tour of the House, and even got to go and stand by the golden throne that Her Madge sits on when she opens Parliament. We were shown round by a tame lord called Ron - nice bloke, married to Joyce.
Because I had the noisiest hotel room on the planet, having drunk only one glass of wine all night, I decided to have a couple of beers to send me off to sleep - this turned into five pints of someJapanese brew, so by the time I got home this afternoon I was still feeling a bit jaded, despite guzzling several bottles of East Coast railway's free mineral water.
However - miles is miles, so I set off towards Halton East to get a few in. I'd decided to take it very steady, so ended up doing 6 miles at an average pace of 8:17 - and on the way up towards Halton East on the way back I must've gone over 9min mile pace - but the important thing is my HR stayed resolutely low with an average of only 124. If I assume my max is about 170 (I'm convinced my assumption it was mid-180's is nonsense), and my resting HR is 43 that means I was still only at about 65% WHR, which is a comfortable place to be.
Going to try another 8m at MP after work tomorrow, as I won't be able to get to the track on Thursday.
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