Another lashing of lactate

This morning I had to do some work on the computer and then got out the door for a run at about 11:00. I was thinking that, in keeping with the run hard theme, I would do some repeats of a 3-km loop around the roads from our place. But I realised I'd left it too late and that there would now be too many pedestrians and stoppages at road crossings. So I opted to go over to Rinshi no Mori Park. This is a park that used to be a forestry research center and it has a wide range of different trees, even a couple of eucalypts.  It has a tight little 1.7 km course, part paved, part packed dirt and with quite a few twists and turns and even a couple of little hills, up and down, including one staircase to bound up.

So after jogging down there slowly, 1.1 km at a bit better than 6:00 min pace, I decided I would run three times two laps (i.e. 3 x 3.4 km intervals) with a five minute recovery. The first lap of the first 3.4 km was a little bit slow at 4:16/k pace. I didn't actually know that though at the time because of the odd distances and lack of any other markers. The second lap was quite a bit faster and that worked out to be 4:02 pace. Quite knocked up at the end of that and took a six minute recovery. The next two-lap repeat was at a more even 4:04 pace. After another six minute shuffle-jog recovery the last set was at 4:02/km for both laps. Was really shagged at the end of this repeat, but I felt that the pace had been pretty good and was satisfied. Even happier when I entered the data later to see that I had been so close to 4:00 pace. That is actually pretty hard to run in that gnarley little course. So, things are looking up. The hip/leg is still a factor, but worrying me less. Maybe I'm just learning to ignore it.

Huge positive vibes going out tonight to Mika and Yoshiko (full) and Satohi (half) for the Osaka Interational Womens Marathon tomorrow. Go you Good Namban Girls!!

Oh yeah...somebody else has written something about Namban Rengo