You see that big shiny banner? Do you? I registered to join the Bounders! ‘Tis most exciting to me 🙂 I’d missed the Run England session last night as I finished work too late to go for the 6pm start and was determined to go out tonight to do something, I was thinking 2 loops around the village – approx. 8km or something. I’m very aware that I’ve got this 10 mile run on Sunday and I haven’t really done any running since last Tuesday until tonight! On Monday I didn’t get home until 21:00 after a 07:30 start – and I literally crawled into bed, made a quilt tube, and that was me for the night.
I was skimming facebook when I got home today (at a slightly more reasonable time!), and noticed one of the Bounders guys had put on the page about a training session tonight for all abilities from 18:30-20:00. Not really sure what I’d be getting myself in for, but sure I’d do more with other people than I would on my own (where it would be very easy to bale after one lap!), I got my trainers on and headed to the leisure centre for the start.
We did a warm-up run down to one of the industrial estates, and then worked back and forth along the road there doing different paces.
The plan:
- 2 lots of 5 mins at 10 mile – half marathon pace and 90 second recovery
- 3 lots of 3 mins at 10km pace and 60 second recovery
- 4 lots of 1 min at 5km pace and 30 second recovery.
For me, the first 5 minute sessions were at my 10km pace, the 3 minute session was at my 5km pace…and for the 1 minute sessions I just tried more of a loping gait and getting my little arms pumping in a desperate bid to get something faster than the previous pace that wouldn’t put me in hospital! As per usual, I was still near the back of the group, but it was a small one tonight – 8 runners total and some of them were seriously quick!
We did a total of 23 minutes ‘active’ time during the pace training section, and the intention is to work that up to 30 minutes over the summer period. The Bounders do a training session every week on a Wednesday; pacing, intervals, hills (next week is hills…), fartleks, track runs… sounds like a good opportunity to improve my running, and I know I’ll push myself more if there’s other people around. We shall see how I do…I’m still intending to do the Run England sessions on Tuesdays, and at the moment Wednesday has been a rest day – this is the first one I’ve done any exercise form on for several weeks!
Total session time for the evening was 1hr11m, and we covered a total of 9.19km which I was pleasantly surprised by – we didn’t go far from the leisure centre in distance, it’s amazing the distance you can cover puffing and panting up and down a road!
You can see where the warm up ended – and we stopped to make sure everyone was ready to go – and where the session ended and I had a good gasping session before we headed back to the leisure centre. The pacing session definitely shows the different times, but I’m not sure it looks like my pace was hugely different! When I put the slider across I can see I did 06:25min/km on the 5 minute sections, about 05:50min/km across the 3 minute sections, and 05:45min/km if I’m lucky on the 1 minute sections – there’s not really much difference from the 3 minute ones. That will come I’m sure!
I’m feeling a bit better about the Thirsk 10 Miler on Sunday, it’ll be a record breaker for me only because it’s the first time I’ve done the distance, and as usual I will be near the back, but I am feeling a bit more confident about actually being able to get round, hopefully in one piece and with possibly a small shred of self-esteem intact!
Blue Runnings 
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