A long short run


Tonight at the track the session is my least favourite: 20 minutes, followed by a four minute break, then two sets of five minutes punctuated by a single minute’s rest. This is the session where I heat up the most, with no time to take on water. The four minute rest helps a bit, but then there’s the derisory sixty seconds between the last two intervals, which is never long enough.

Plus today I didn’t prepare adequately, unless being stuck in meetings until 3 and having to quaff a sandwich in 15 minutes for lunch counts as preparation.

Still, I did a few things right. I got home from work and gave my daughter a bath, I took a taxi to the track so I wasn’t rushing to catch trains, and I checked my average pace. Last week I averaged 1:41 exactly for every lap. That seems achievable, except I’ve never run 20/5/5 at an average pace as quick as that. So in the taxi on the way over, I pondered my strategy for the night.

Every lap at 1:40 or close enough to it. No going out like a loon for the first five minutes. That meant I wouldn’t do 5k in 20 minutes, just 4.8, but with the heavy humid air tonight, survival is the important goal.

Unfortunately, although I took a taxi to the Botanic Gardens where the track is, I didn’t pay attention and I got dropped off at the other end of the Botanic Gardens. Right at the other end, the southeast corner when the track is at the northwest corner. Worse, the park is roughly oblong in shape, with a lake in the middle and the only major paths run around the perimeter, so there was no short cut for me and ten minutes for me to get to the start of the session. Call it a warm-up, the kind of warm-up where you’re wearing a pair of shorts so loose they’re threatening to fall down and trip you up, and you’re yomping under the weight of a huge bag. In the dark.

Inexplicably, I made it in time for the start. I even made it in time for the real warm-up, where I spent half the time trying to cool down. And then off we went:

1:38.5
1:39.0
1:39.0
1:38.0
1:39.4
1:39.7
1:39.9
1:39.8
1:40.4
1:42.9
1:42.4
1:38.9

It drizzled a bit near the end of the first 20 minutes, which helped my temperature. Then it started thundering and lightning, which may have inspired an acceleration:

1:36.1
1:42.2
1:35.4

And then I hit the wall:

1:39.3
1:47.1
1:43.0

So for the first 25 minutes it was pretty solid, and then I went to pieces on the last two laps, which was a shame. That second-to-last set was a bad idea; I went under my target time by 6.3 seconds, and then I did the last three laps 9.4 seconds slower than planned. After all I said about going out and running cautiously, it appears I went out too aggressively again. Although if my mental arithmetic is correct, over all 18 laps I was a total of one second slower, which is a fair improvement on the last time I ran this session. So what do I have to complain about? I made it round, which was more than I had expected at 8:05 this evening. That’s surely enough to ask.


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