A shadow of my former self.

"It's not Thursday,is it? was the question from behind the reception desk at Nelson's Seedhill track today.

"No, just giving myself an extra day's leeway with the possibility of a race at the weekend", I explained.
  A good idea as long as my calves were OK;  they were still feeling a touch sore this morning ..but not enough to avoid the track session altogether.   Kilometre reps last week, so in search of extra pace I changed down to 8 x 600 with a 200 jog recovery.
 The average per 100 for the Ks being 26.2 last week I felt it reasonable to aim for 25 secs per 100  which would give me a target of 2.30 per 600.  Bearing in mind the last set of these had been at an average of 2.39
it would not be an easy target.

Returning to the track after the usual park warm up, the autumn skies were cloudless and the trees were still.

The gloves came off, the hat came off,  jacket and warm up bottoms came off, the Brooks racers were triple tied(!) and off I went! checking as I reached each 100 how close I was to that 25 secs target.  Straight away I could feel the north easterly chill on the home straight that had produced the overnight frost and knew at least the hat would have to go back on.   Not quite as warm as it looked.

The reps proved pretty consistent but I "lost my way" slightly in the middle of the rep, mainly through concentration drifting.  It was only for  the last 2 that I managed to go  under the 2.30 target.  But averaging 2:31.8 a big  improvement on 2.39!

2:33.5      2:32.0      2:33.5      2:33.3      2:32.2       2:31.7      2:29.5      2:29.0

So all in all a reasonable session; but with the low temperature and protecting the legs somewhat it was far from comfortable despite the average pace being "only" 42 10K pace.  

I know I shouldn't dwell too much on past glories but as I pushed myself around the track today I couldn't help but think that here I was running 600 metres at a pace far slower than I used to be able to run for 26 miles.  Somewhat depressing, but inevitable I suppose.

Make the most of your potential whilst you can!   Me...just a shadow of my former self.....