To bed, to bed, to bed

This has been an exhausting weekend. I’m cream crackered. Training this week stayed on track despite a hamstring twinge on my long run last Sunday. I went to club training on Tuesday evening and after a tentative start was able to give it a good go at the intervals session. I’m really looking forward to getting back to the park on lighter evenings and running the 1km intervals. Ran 10 miles in just short of eighty minutes on Thursday with no ill effects. Had a massage on Friday when Tony reported heavy bruising on the left hamstring and a very tight right hamstring. On the Saturday morning I was torn between taking an easy parkrun and giving the hamstring a bit of a testing. I ended up running a little faster than was sensible, but again the hamstrings were ok. I really enjoyed the events that Tom/Leeds Uni put on with the paralympian athletes, really humbling, uplifting and inspiring. Pity the weather didn’t do its bit.

Today was the Trimpell 20 and it turned out to be a perfect day with warm sunshine, though a bitter wind when clouds skipped across the sun. Mick Hogan kindly agreed to keep me company. He’s not running a marathon this year, but is supporting Dawn in her bid for London glory, so he wasn’t committed to running at any particular pace. Having decided to run at about my intended London Marathon pace of 7:30 I went off a little too quickly and was three minutes up at the half way mark. The second half was a lot tougher than the first and I seemed to really struggle, but came back at marathon pace and held onto the three minute gain from the first half. I was really surprised at this as it felt like I was running on half-chewed Thornton’s Special Toffee for the last five miles. I dropped maybe fifteen places in the last five miles, so there must have been a good few negative splits in there to compensate for my “run of two halves”.

The body felt pretty much ok once I stopped running except for my feet. These feel like Mr Shifter has parked his piano on my feet and wandered off for several mugs of PG Tips. Time to take the weight off my feet and sleep the sleep of the righteous.