ON THE RIGHT TRACK?

One benefit of being self employed, semi -retired and working at home is that I can generally wait for a window in times of bad weather and get the day's run in. Yesterday, Tuesday, was  such a day. An easy pace flat 6 on the road  was the post race choice on Monday , so I nudged up the distance to 7. Keen to get back on the trail, I made my weekly trip to do the Fewston Swinsty reservoirs circuit. (The 2 Res Run, as I call it) I expected to have to prance through a lot of water on the narrow paths(not good for fragile hamstrings!) and so it proved. So 13 miles since Sunday's 5K race but not one of them faster than 9 minute/ mile pace according to the Garmin.  

Needed to get the old legs going a tad faster again so a Nelson Seedhill track session was called for. Last week I did a diminishing session whereby I started with 5 laps, then 4 , 3, 2, 1 looking for acceleration down the scale. This worked quite well; averaging 1.47.8   1.46  1.43.5   1.42.5    1.35.  (i.e. 5/4/3/2/1)

I'm a bit wary of speed sessions in the week after a race so for today I decided to go up the other way;  aiming to maintain the initial pace as laps were added. (i.e. 1/ 2/ 3/ 4/ 5)On the first 400 I managed 1.47.8.   800 average 1.49.8. , 1200 average 1.50.7 ,  1600 average  1.50.7   2000 average 1.49.3.  The last lap of the 2000 was 1.46.5. Faster than the single 400, so quite pleased with the session generally; in very wet and windy conditions.  6000 meters in total.  9 miles with 2 mile warm up and 2 cool down.

Average pace overall was slower than pace throughout Sunday's 5k but this is usually the case doing track sessions by myself.  Would definitely be faster in a group but no groups operating at 11.30 a.m. on a Wednesday morning!! Hence the need for regular races to maintain pace; particularly as so many offroad miles are 2 minutes slower than 5k/10k race pace.