As I like to remind the, let’s call them senior, more experienced members of the Stragglers, I have a number of years to wait before the big four zero becomes a reality.
A milestone of a different nature for that number, is one which many of those same, senior runners, have reached on countless occasions, and it’s one which I can now say I have also achieved. That being, miles run in a week.
I’ve also managed to get my head round the idea of how to incorporate some speed work into my marathon training, in a way which is doing me good, but not putting my body at any unnecessary risk.
My Tuesday night run involves a 1K triangle course, in Bushy Park close to where I live.
This week was as enjoyable a speed session I can remember, since the days of speed endurance work during the winter while at
Leeds City AC ten years ago.
Six laps of the 1K circuit, alternating between jog and tempo running, changing speed at each turn on the course. Add in the warm up and warm down and this came to 5 miles.
Thursday night is also falling very much into the category labelled routine, our usual 10 miler including a lap of Richmond Park. We’re all about keeping it fresh and varied though, one week we’ll go clockwise, the next anti clockwise: variety being the spice of life and all that. Incidentally, the hardest part of that run is passing the excellent curry house in Ham at the beginning of the night.
This week was one of those moments when the stats make you realise you’re running well. There was some discussion as to exactly how long we took, some clocked 72 minutes, we had 74 – I’ll stick with ours. As I’ve probably mentioned before, Richmond Park ain’t flat, with a couple of hills that certainly make you put the effort in. This 74 minute training run is not far off the 73:23 I did the Cabbage Patch 10 in, and that course is almost as flat as the proverbial pancake. This sets me up nicely for Wokingham Half in two weeks, and does make me wonder what I’d run Cabbage Patch in now.
Friday saw an hour on the bike, there are plans forming about what we might enter the tandem into later in the year.
Saturday saw me return to the Bushy Parkrun. There’s something about trying to be fast at 9 AM, I can’t quite seem to get myself moving. I set my alarm extra early this week and everything! Even a particularly energising
AC/DC track which
Planet Rock played before I left the house didn’t make much difference, I think I may need to study the lyrics of ‘Thunderstruck’ and see if I can sneak it onto the London music list, that said, I don’t want to tempt fate and have actual thunder on the day.
All this grumbling about early mornings, I still set a new personal best for Bushy, 21:35, an improvement of 8 seconds. Its 30 seconds down on my quickest 5K time though.
The Parkrun was part of a longer run, 2 miles before and, once the time had been registered and other Stragglers talked to for a few minutes, another 9 or so after, giving a Saturday morning total of 14.
With another 11 today, and my fairly shabby adding up skills tell me that my weekly total comes to 40.
I am fairly tired now though: must be the age.
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