Dexys Midnight Runners

I could almost join them. Yesterday we had this deadline to meet at work. It was a big translation and we had outsourced most of the translation, but still had a lot of work to check through it all and put it together and, frustratingly, incorporate the client's changes that kept coming through. We (my boss and I were working on it) were given a final deadline of 3:00. That's AM. The client had to have it for a meeting later in the morning, and they still had work to do putting our translated labels on figures and so on.

Well, we finally got finished at 2:15. That's AM. With no trains running by that time, I had three choices: sleep in the office, take a cab, or run home. I suppose a sane person would take a cab, but I had my running gear with me so opted for the last option. I guess I am not entirely sane. It was quite slow, and I thought of it as a recovery run from the tempo run earlier on Thursday morning. I got home, had a can of beer and went to bed a little before 4:00. That's AM. Blech.

I ran back to work this morning after sleeping until late in the morning. Didn't push the pace on the way to the Gaien picture gallery, averaging 5:14/km, then ran five laps at a target upper aerobic pace. I was looking at a heart rate of 149 (80%), but somehow as I got into it, I felt more comfortable at about 152. This produced a pace per lap of 4:14, 4:17, 4:14, 4:14, 4:16 for an average of 4:15/km and average heart rate (excluding the first lap) of 152.

OK, I revise the assessment of last Sunday from "just not quite there" to "hmmm, just about could be there". I am sure though, that the secret is going to be some more of this work pushing the my upper aerobic envelope up into the mid 150s and some more threshold runs to cope with any periods of over-enthusiasm and the late-race lactate flood.