Back in the saddle

So the workout ended up going fairly well. It was a cold, crisp morning as I headed down to Old Bell at 7.15. I did some stretching and jogging on the spot to try and keep warm and then Mike turned up a couple of minutes later. Jordan wasn't going to show- he had had a late night waiting up for the result of Meagan's 10k which saw her crush a sub 35 and automatic qualification for the NCAA Div II champs which will be held in Charlotte of all places in May- so we headed off on our two mile warm up to the lake. Mike had marked out a two mile loop around the back end of the XC course and when we reached the course it was obvious that a race was going to be held that morning. Luckily that didn't end up going off until 8:30 by which time we were done.

After a few strides we got straight into it. The original goal of the workout was to run 4 * 2 miles at around 5:30 to 5:40 pace. It's always difficult to slot right into the correct pace on these type workouts and sure enough a glance at the Garmin after a couple of minutes showed that we were running a little fast at about 5:20 pace. Reined it in a little for the rest of that interval and hit the two mile mark in 11:02. A quick 90 second jog/walk back to the starting point and we headed out for the second interval. Was on pace now and hit this one in 11:04. About a mile into the third one I could feel myself starting to strain a little so decided that discretion would be the better part of valour and that the third one would suffice for now. I finished this off in 11:11, said thanks and bye to Mike and headed back on the warm down home. My lower legs were feeling pretty sore at this point so I'm glad I didn't try and force a 4th interval. We had run a little faster than intended and when we looked on the 'gmap' later the Garmin had measured a little long too so all in all I was pretty satisfied with the workout and the effort.

Coach Tim was impressed with the effort. We've decided for now that for the next few weeks I'll just do my own stuff and then look at how things are going in a month or so, see what things need working on and take it from there, rather than launching into another 'training plan' right now. Makes sense with the trip to Europe coming up and at the moment I'm just enjoying being able to train again without having to worry about mileage and workout goals each week. Certainly by the time the second GP race rolls around in 4 weeks I would hope to be back in sub 16 shape, we'll see...