NO PEN & PAPER REQUIRED

For well over a week I have enjoyed mild, sunny conditions for my late morning runs. I know many have suffered as the weather has deteriorated later in the day. Well, today the weather caught up with me with avengeance! I had anticipated having to face driving rain at the Nelson track so I planned 300s.  Not run as normal a summer fast 5k low rep. session but instead more of a speed endurance session aiming for a minimun of 21 reps. to give me approx. 4 miles of effort as normal.

3 mile warm up around the nearby Victoria Park, a few strides then off...with the rain now quite heavy and horizontal.  Managed to hit my target time ..........but sadly only on the very last rep. So nothing to write home about...no pen and paper required.

The problem with doing so many reps.alone is that of lack of concentration. When the mind starts to drift then the arms stop drivingas they should and a few seconds are added to the time of the rep.

COOL DOWN!  Having done 9 miles at this point and with still no let up with the weather it would have been so easy to call it a day. But I added a mile jog to ease down the pulse rate gradually.

This was the mistake I made on Sunday at the end of that hard 12. Finishing with a 7.30 mile, only 40 seconds off race pace I just stopped, jogged for a few yards then walked the short distance to the car. They say the older the runner, the greater the body's "backlash" is likely to be from such an abrupt stop. I have always encouraged anyone I have mentored to avoid the common post race "huddle" and chat , going instead into an immediate cool down.  Plenty of time then for a chat about the race after.

Todays' photo shows a typical post race "evaluation" taking place after the Humber Marathon of 1985 with fellow Valley Striders.
Martin Hopson, Steve O'Callaghan, Terry Bean and
on the other side of the fence supporter V.S. founder member Stuart St.John. It's particularly significant because we are discussing how despite
finishing 8th (Martin, 2:27) 9th (Steve 2.27) 10th
(Terry B. 2:27) and me at 11th we wouldn't  be attending the presentation because there's only prizes for the first 6 and only one team prize! We had finished only second on countback and to their credit Sheffield A.C. said we had been very hard done by. If I recall correctly the following  year
the lads returned without me and shared £1000!