A week's worth of effort

Sorry for not updating this sooner in the week, but it's been a difficult few days.

This week has been a fairly active week! I've managed three runs this week, an 7.7km run on Tuesday, a 4.4km run on Thursday and a 4.75km run today.

The first run was with Felix and Hannah, and was longer than I had first expected. It was based on the loop around Woodford that we did before. Only this time we did a second loop around the housing estate. I was expecting just the one loop, but we all felt quite good as we completed the first, so we just kept going. I think the slow start and even speeding up of pace helped to keep things going well, as I haven't cracked my habit of just speeding off down the road yet! But the nice evening weather meant that it was just cool enough to keep going without getting too hot. Felix is also a massive gadget geek, so his running watch was doing a good job of keeping us up to date with our pace. This allowed us to keep a fairly even rate, which is exactly the type of training I need to be doing more of. My own pace is too varied, even if it is a bit quicker. I would be better off slowing down but going further. And that is why I think I felt so good at the end of the run, despite getting into something of a race to the end with Felix! It also turns out that Hannah is easy to upset when it comes to running up hills. I went off a head a little on the last slope, but telling Hannah she's slacking off seems to wind her up!

One thing that does seem to be a bit of a problem is my iPhone. Whilst it only seems to happen in Woodford, it does drop the GPS signal and give weird readings and therefore distances and elevations. Before I altered the route details, I had run 8.5km and managed an almost 500m descent and climb within 4 mins!!

The second run in the week, I have no data for at all! I was out with Felix on Thursday evening, but despite my phone starting the run when I finished it said I had been 4 mins 7 secs and run no distance. The run itself was a fairly quick one as I just wasn't in the mood for running and feeling a bit down. As such, Felix did a slightly longer route, but I turned for home sooner. I had expected to be a bit blown when I got to the top of the hill, but I wasn't at all much to my surprise. So I ended up extending my run to go and meet Felix, after I got bored of jogging up and down the road outside his house! This time we really did have a race to the end, with him beating me as I just can't keep my full sprint up for very long! Looks like I'm still built for comfort rather than speed.

So whilst I have checked how far I ran, and it was 4.4km, I have no idea how long it took for sure. We were doing something around 6mins/km, but I'm only guessing. As such, I'm only half way counting this run.

My last run of the week was today, and on my own. Hannah was Park Running yesterday, and Felix was working. As the weather was so nice, it seemed almost a shame not to go out in the sunshine for a while! I was going out for my usual 4.75km run out of the village and back again. Hannah had informed me of her Park Run time of 25:44 for 5km, so I had a bit of a target to aim for as well. As the weather was so nice, I decided to see about dressing a little differently too. Over the winter I had worn my trousers over shorts as they kept my cramps at bay and my legs warm. Today was quite sunny and warm, so I decided to see if I could manage without them. As such, I was feeling brave enough to go running in just my lycra shorts and my long sleeved top for the first time! I did have a brief look at myself in a mirror before going out, and everything looked just about decent enough! I also thought that I'd see next to no-one whilst I was out as it was so quiet, which was reassuring.

Almost as soon as I set out, there seemed to be people everywhere! There seemed to be women walking dogs and groups of blokes out riding bikes at every turn. But as I was pushing a target time, I wasn't paying enough attention for it to bother me much. I had the audible pace settings on my phone turned on, so for the first time I had something to tell me how even I was running. This was really helpful, and showed me when to speed up and when to slow down a bit to keep things even. Mainly, it was when to speed up a bit, as I was wanting to push for 5mins/km. Despite the good conditions, I still end up with running hair! I also think I need a different running top, as that green colour is not doing my pasty complexion any favours.

As the charts show, I managed a much better job of keeping things smooth than usual. Whilst the pace graph looks spikey, the scale of those spikes is much less than usual. And the push for home wasn't quite as severe as the pace increase shows, although I did try to get my time under 25 mins! As my phone was set to inform me every 5 mins of my progress, I knew how long I had left and how much to push. As I got back home, I was really quite pleased to hear my phone call out 25 mins! This is the quickest I have run by a fair margin, although the conditions where ideal for a good time. Looks like I might stand half a chance of keeping up with Hannah next time out!!