A bit of a struggle

For anybody who has me on Bloglines, sorry for the flood yesterday. I migrated to Blogger beta. I'm not sure why I did or what benefits it might bring, but anyway, it's done now, and as a result all the old posts seemed to get posted to Bloglines.

Thursday
Worked at home most of the day and got out for an easy 7.5 km in the afternoon. Nothing much to say about it. Just plodded around and did a few core exercises.

Friday (this morning)
The last couple of Friday mornings I have done a tempo run in the middle of a run to work. For one reason and another it didn't suit to do it that way this week, so I had to wake up at 5:00 and get out the door. Despite a few hints of cold symptoms coming on, I did manage to get up. I knew that because of the distance to Komazawa Park, the total distance would be a bit more than is optimal at this point in a taper, but I wanted to do at least 8 km of tempo. So I decided to make sure I took it easy on the run to the park. Well, that turned out to be no problem as I did it at an average pace of 5:33 min/km. Slowest I've done it since the time I tried it with a massive hangover ;-)

So then I hooked into the tempo run, but I really wasn't warmed up enough and the first lap (2.15 km) was a real struggle to raise both heart rate and pace. The lap pace was 4:16 /km and average heart rate only 141 (76%).  On the next lap I came up behind this Japanese guy running a similar pace, but as I approached, he surged. I was deliberately trying to lift my pace gradually, but didn't need someone surging and slowing in front of me. I expected to go past him soon, but each time I would draw close to him, the richard would surge forward again. It was really annoying. Just run your own pace, dude! Then after about 1.5 km he stopped, so must have been doing an interval or tempo or something.  I was glad to see the end of him, but at least he had got me moving faster and the second lap was 4:01/km, HR avg: 154 (83%). Pushed on through the next lap for an identical pace, but HRavg up to 157 (84%). On the fourth (last) lap I managed to slip under 4:00 to 3:57/km, but it seemed like too hard work for that pace. HRavg was 160 (86%). I then had to make an urgent use of the facilities. After that I ran home, again at an easy pace that averaged 5:03/km.

Basically, I found it hard to really get properly into this run and couldn't hit the pace and heart rates I wanted. I think this is just a function of running so early in the morning, or could also be some residual fatigue from Wednesday night's workout, so I am not too unhappy. Hopefully it is not a sign of an encroaching lurgy. I have been cramming in the Vitamin C, and so far the cold symptoms are very mild indeed.