Friday, February 6, 2009

This Week....

Flown past! On the way home from the Lakes on Saturday the engine management light came on in my car and the engine lost power. It would still cruise along ok but acceleration was a bit glacial. On Sunday, I did nothing due to combination of dodgy car meaning I couldn't get anywhere to go for a hilly run and with it being the day after a proper crash my neck was really stiff.

Monday I spent the morning booking my car into the garage and then not much at all as my broadband wasn't working for a couple of hours. Luckily my work were very understanding letting me work from home and logging on once the broadband was back. I went out for a walk to the post office to check conditions and decided it was too slippy/icy/snowy everywhere to run comfortably (kicking myself for not doing something on Sunday), but did walk for an hour or two taking some frosty pictures.

Tuesday I got to work in Jez's car and did an interval session at lunchtime. I was doing the 5 mins hard, 5 mins easy session again. It was pretty windy but I had the wind behind me when doing the first interval and I set off far too fast! The second one was still wind assisted. For the other three I was sheltered a bit, particularly for the last two as the dunes were in the way of the wind. I decided to try to maintain the average pace of the first interval, which was really hard and on the last one I had to shout at myself not to stop.

I hung on and average paces for the five: 06.47 6.48 6.48 6.52 6.49

Which is quite amazingly consistent for me. The downside was that working so hard meant that two minutes felt like an eternity!

Wednesday I was again working from home, I was supposed to be dropping my car off at the garage. The plan was to put my bike in the back, drop the car off, cycle into Preston to visit Post Office and bank then bimble home. Stupid car decided it wouldn't start!!!!! I tried to locate some jump leads in case it was the battery, none of my neighbours who were in had them (or they were in hubbies car, who was at work).

I should really have some leads so I cycled to B & Q a mile away, they didn't have any. So I headed to Halfords aboout 4 miles away (passing the garage annoyingly) and back. Had to wait for a neighbour with a car to come home, linked it all up and fecker still refused to start. Just belched loads of acrid white smoke out the back. Ah well another wasted morning.

Spent all afternoon trying to contact the garage and trying to figure out what to do with the stupid thing. At about 3pm I cycled into Preston to do the errands I was supposed to do this morning. All the faffing about added up to 20 miles of cycling.

Thursday was tempo run day: 1 mile easy then 7 miles at long tempo pace. It had been snowing a little before I set off but nothing that was going to lie. As I stepped out the door I thought it was a bit warmer than yesterday. There wasn't much wind but I decided to run into it for the first half of the run. I ran down the prom to the monstrosity that is Lytham Quays, then from there to Green Drive, and back along the wooded track I discovered last time and then back to work.

After an easy mile and a bit where I had to slow myself down a lot I picked the pace up a bit. I wanted to see how long I could maintain 8:40 pace. As the snow had stopped it seemed get colder. When I turned back towards work at around the half way point I picked up the pace even more (it was bloody cold). Mile splits:

8.40 8.38 8.36 8.28 8.15 8.14 8.21

I felt I was running quite well at the end, last time I felt I was running that well I broke myself (paranoia). Hopefully as I have to rest on Friday it'll give my legs a good chance to recover.

1 comment:

  1. Busy busy week, sounds like the training is working, they are great splits!

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