Sparkie's rundiary

It's actually been a long time since I've had a training session that didn't feel great, so I headed out this morning fflippantly thinking "oh - I'll run 16km, with the middle 10km in around 39 minutes". After the 5th km, the last 3 of which were sub-4:00, it became evident that I was not going to sustain this pace for the rest of the workout. Dropped back to 4:10/km to recover, but my heart rate was still elevated (and if I'm honest with myself, it was before I even started - about 10 bpm higher than normal while I waited for my Garmin to lock in), and so I ran the last 8km at 4:30-4:40, which wasn't bad, but is much slower than I am used to. I was actually feeling a bit dehydrated, and did notice that is was 31 degrees when I finished, so there were a few contributing factors, but mostly 3 weeks of missed or choppy training was rearing its head.

I will try and keep to my program, maybe dropping the pace slightly, but just resigning myself to some tougher sessions to get things back on track. I really want to run well at the State 3000m champs, which means I really can't afford to miss any training between now and then. I will be slightly adjusting my track workouts to focus more on 3000m speed, although I will still be keeping the training in the VO2 max range.

A parcel of running books from Amazon lifted my spirits a bit this afternoon, as did an unexpected email from a friend. Just 200 situps, and I can call it a night.