Catch Up

Morning Campers

Thought y'all may be due an update, and as I'm loaded with cold I've got time off running to do one

Things have been going pretty well (other than the cold), now that Coach Jim seems to be back with a vengeance, but I'll get to that later. I've been really busy with work so I've missed a couple of the longer runs, especially on a weekend, but I don't think it'll do too much harm at this time of year. After the marathon in November the longest I've managed to get out and do in one go is 8 miles. It seems so short in comparison to the training runs I was doing in the run up to the race, but I'm trying just to get some of my speed back now, so I think I can sacrifice a couple of the much longer weekend runs.

The last couple of weeks have been good for my club sessions. I've been working pretty hard and I'm starting to see some results.

Tue 26 5pm Warm Up 1.8m - 15:00 8:20 min/mi 7.2mph
Tue 26 6pm New Road 3.73m - 26:20 7:04 min/mi 8.5mph

New road session was 4 x1500 (well, just slightly over 1500m). I was a little quick off the mark on the first one, as per usual, but the rest of the reps were spot on:

6:17, 6:41, 6:41, 6:41

Thu 28 6pm Track Session 2.98m - 21:16 7:08 min/mi 8.41mph

8x 600, 100 walk 100 jog recovery. Pretty consistent pace on each rep:
2:37, 2:38, 2:39, 2:42, 2:41, 2:40, 2:39, 2:40

Sat 30 9am Race 3.11 - 24:55 8:01 min/mi 7.49mph

Newcastle parkrun - was 2nd lady in the super slow time of 24:55 (mind you Lynn wasn't that far ahead of me either) - this was due to the 2.5" of snow we had to run through, but at least I got to test out my new fell shoes.

The rest of Saturday was taken up with the Town moor cross country. I decided not to run, but I was doing the ladies & junior girls results with Alan, so I was up there all day. This meant that all of my work from Saturday was shifted to Sunday so I missed my long run again.

Tue 2 5pm Warm Up 1.3m - 12:47 9:50 min/mi 6.1mph
Tue 2 6pm Hill Session 5.25m - 43:11 8:14 min/mi 7.29mph
Tue 2 7pm Warm Down 0.7m - 7:15 10:21 min/mi 5.7mph

Coach Jim's evil hill torture session. 10 x Springfield (Field Terrace & Kitchener Terrace). Hard up, hard along, easy down. This is a really tough session but I worked really hard (and was only lapped by Craig once ). I did look up my time from the last time we did this session, and was well happy - 44:03 down to 43:11.

Wed 3 6pm Wednesday Run 5m - 52:29 10:30 min/mi 5.72mph

I did a mile or so before meeting the guys & Helen at York Avenue, then pretty much as we set off it started to snow . I was knackered from the night before, so Alan & I did the shorter route (not that it took much arm twisting). As we made our way back to York Avenue the ground started to ice up and was too slippy to run on, so we were forced to walk. Not the best time in the world but at least I got out.

Thursday was a bit of a write off in terms of running - I woke up feeling a bit off (I thought it was after my trip to the hygienist, but now know it was cause I'm full of cold), so I wasn't gonna go down to the track. Jim texted me the session so I decided just to pop down and let folks know what it was. There was only Jimmy & Alan turned up (and Jimmy buggered off somewhere) which just left Alan. I decided just to go home.

So that's me up to date.

No parkrun for me this morning as I don't want to turn this cold into one of those things that lingers for weeks - I'm actually starting to listen to my own advice!

Happy running folks