Dear beautiful spring weather, I miss you. Was it something I said?

So, I decided to mix things up a bit this week. (Having previously said I was good at sticking to schedules, I’m not actually sticking to this one all that well.) Anyway, yesterday’s called for three miles easy, and Thursday’s for a 5-mile tempo run. I decided to swap these around and extend the tempo run a bit, with the aim of seeing if I could crack 10k in 1 hour, something I haven’t previously managed. Kind of a time trial sorta thing, I guess you could say. My plan was to run out and back along the railway line, this being a pretty flat route.

Plans nearly went astray when I clocked the weather, which was wet and very windy. It didn’t look appealing, and it did cross my mind to revert to the previously planned 3 miles and do them in the gym instead, leaving the 10k till Thursday. However, a brief respite from the rain and even an (even briefer) glimpse of the sun persuaded me to hit the outdoors, wearing my new blue long-sleeved top and a cap to keep the rain off. I did wonder if this had after all been such a great idea as I battled up the hill to the start of my planned route, against the gale which was blowing directly into my face. I also wondered how long my hat would stay on.

However, as I began my run, trying to maintain a pace around the 9:40 mark, I was pleased to note that the distance appeared to be passing quite quickly. Eventually, and to my dismay, I realised this was because I had somehow managed to accidentally switch the distance units on the Garmin from miles to kilometres. As pace was still in miles per minute, it took me a wee while to notice this. I would have noticed it sooner, except that I was running in the opposite direction along the railway line from my usual one, and I’m not so familiar with the landmarks along the route. Still, once I got over my disappointment at not having run as far as I thought I had, it seemed – given that I was doing 10k - not after all such an unreasonable idea to measure it in kilometres…

The wind continued and, rather embarrassingly, my hat did indeed blow off at one point and I had to run back to get it. Well, would’ve been embarrassing if there had been anyone around to witness, but evidently few other people were crazy enough to venture out. After about a mile and a half of the outward journey, I remembered why it may not have been such a great idea to run in this direction, viz. the massive puddles which appear on the path whenever it rains. Most of these were possible to hop over or rather muddily circumnavigate, but one in particular was more of a small lake than a puddle and could only be bypassed by wading through it. (Shades of “We’re Going On A Bear Hunt” – “we can’t go over it! we can’t go round it! we’ll have to go through it!”) New-ish trainers well and truly christened, all in the joyful knowledge that I would have to repeat the experience on the way back.

The weather cleared up a bit as I reached the halfway point, where the path crosses a main road, and with some relief turned around to begin the homeward journey. Still almost on target time-wise – first 5k in 30:07, so slightly over, but was hoping the wind being behind me on the way back would help. Which, apparently, it did, along with the rain stopping, my hat staying in place and the psychological benefit of being on the home straight. Fourth mile was in 9:43, so not great, but fifth was in 9:20 and sixth in 9:14, giving a total 10k (6.21 mile) time of 59:38. Yay!


1km 6:08 6:08
2km 12:01 5:53
3km 18:14 6:13
4km 24:18 6:04
5km 30:07 5:49
6km 36:16 6:09
7km 42:12 5:56
8km 47:54 5:42
9km 53:45 5:51
10km 59:38 5:53

Average mile pace: 9:35 Average km pace: 5:58

Average moving pace, however, was apparently 9:28 – and total moving time was 58:54, so it seems I lost 46 seconds somewhere along the line, what with hat rescuing, puddle navigation and what have you. I’m not going to claim 58:54, though. I’m happy enough with 59:38 – a sub-60 minute 10k at last! Admittedly it was on the flat, and the Balmoral 10k in a fortnight’s time involves a big hill, so not too hopeful of replicating my stunning feat there, but I do have high hopes for the (flat) Baker Hughes 10k in May...

No need for speed

So, on with the training. I'm following a Smartcoach training programme for the half-marathon. I'm pretty good at sticking to training schedules, except for the Smartcoach pacing, which even to me seems very slow. I know, slow is (sometimes) good. But nearly 12-minute miles for easy and long runs feels almost unbearably slow.

I know running slow(er) is important for building endurance and kind of even know why. I even know this from my own experience - reducing the pace enables me to run much further. But despite knowing it, I still don't quite feel it. I still feel that every run at every distance should ideally be faster than the last run at that distance. I know this is stupid.

Anyway, yesterdays' scheduled run was so-called speedwork, which seems an ironic name given my slowness. Smartcoach called for 5 miles including 2 x 1600m (that's a mile, near enough - I have no idea why they mix miles and metres in this way. It just confuses me) at 9:39 pace. That's not fast. I thought I should manage it. Excitingly, this was only my second outdoor run (snow came back to haunt us for a couple of days) using my thrilling new toy, the Garmin Forerunner 405. For the uninitiated, this is an amazing gadget which enables you to track pace, distance and even exact location using GPS technology, and then upload it to your computer for happy hours of geekdom. Well, nearly exact location. Poring over the map of my route afterwards, I noticed that I was apparently running through hedges and over the tops of houses, which I'm fairly sure I wasn't. But, you know, it was close enough.

Now, I know there are ways of inserting Garmin data into the blog (I've seen it on loads of other blogs, so you can definitely do it). But I've never done it. Hang on....



I think that kind of worked, though I didn't mean to show the whole thing, and it's better on satellite than map, as I was running along the old railway line which isn't actually marked on the map. Clicking on satellite and zooming in on the red line will, however, show me running over the tops of houses on the outward journey, although, weirdly, along the path on the return leg. Definitely need to work on figuring this out a bit more.

Let's try splits.

1 10:14
2 8:58
3 9:39
4 9:59
5 9:23

Total: 48:14 (Avg pace 9:41)

As you can see, I did the second mile much faster than scheduled - this was partly due to not having quite figured out the settings on the Garmin. I had it set to auto scroll, which meant I had to keep looking back at my watch until the screen showing pace came round again, which made it difficult to monitor. Next time, I'll set the scrolling to off. Anyway, that mile actually felt pretty easy, but predictably enough I was then knackered and never again achieved the dizzy heights of 8:58/mile or indeed follow the scheduled pacings.

Run was actually, at 4.98 miles, just short of the planned 5, not that it matters. I would have carried on past my house purely in order to hear the beep on my Garmin and have a nice round 5-mile time, but when I reached home I noticed that my son's girlfriend was sitting outside in her car waiting for him (I don't know why he doesn't allow the poor girl into the house) and I was too embarrassed to run past her up the road for a few seconds and immediately turn back, as that would have made me look like an insane person, not to mention a beetroot-faced and sweating one, so 4.98 miles it was.