28th Mar – Sub 12 minutes – TWICE!!

Sorry I have been absent – I seem to have some sort of sleeping sickness at the moment, I just can’t get enough of it!

After last Mondays run I was really pleased with myself – 3. 6m at a 12:09m mile pace – a great start towards improving my pace. So when I went on Thursday I thought it would be the same again…

OH NO – this group is about PAIN, and PAIN and MORE PAIN!!  Thursdays run was 3.18 m at 11:46m mile pace. That’s an increase of 23 seconds. In one session. And then today, we went out again, 3.27m in 11:16m mile pace. So in one week they have upped the pace by 53 seconds.

I tried…I really, really tried to moan about it tonight, but the 2 coaches are so nice they just kept saying; Carla you did so well, you’re getting so much better, and they were smiling lots and patting my back and being all happy happy joy joy that I really couldn’t be moany. Really. So now I have to be moany on here cos I need to get out – here goes… 53 seconds increase in ONE WEEK WTF?????? Are they trying to kill me? Do they think I am an ATHLETE or something??? How can it be POSSIBLE to go that much faster in ONE POXY BLUDDY WEEK RAR!!!

Ah, that feels better. In other news, I did 2 ‘extra’ sessions last week. I have 2 friends that have seen me start running and wanted to try it themselves. There is a beginners group at my running club that starts in 3 weeks, but they wanted to try it out first to see if they could do it, so I said I would take them out a couple of times. Tuesday we started with a brisk walk – we did 1.9m in 42m40 – neither of them have exercised since school so I have to start really small. They both did really well, so on Thursday we added in 15 second bursts of very slow jogging, and covered 1.69m in 32m33s – an increase of 3 minutes in pace – what an improvement eh? I am going out with them twice a week to get them started then will hopefully hand them over to the professionals at Striders for proper coaching. It feels really good to be able to pay it forward and I hope at least one of them keeps it up, it will be good to have another running partner!

Right now I have mixed emotions about the Sandy 10 mile run (race?) that I am doing on Sunday. It’s my first race so I have all the what I presume are normal pre-race nerves. Have I done enough training? What if I’m crap? Is it OK to walk a bit if I need to? I talked it through with my new group coach who is handily also doing it! She said there is a massive hill mile 2 – 3 so I should start off with 12m30s – 13 m miles, and then once the hill is done and I’m into my stride (it normally takes me 3 miles to warm up) I can start to speed up with a view to getting negative splits. The who what now?? For those of you that don’t know (which is probably only me)apparently the idea when you do a long race is to get slighter quicker as you go, not slower. So negative splits means each mile is slightly quicker than the last. If I start at 13m and increase by an average 10 seconds per hour I’ll be at 11m 20 for my last mile which would be awesome! So that’s my goal for Sunday – start slow and steady and build up for a good finish. Shazruns is doing it along with me, I’m hoping that plan is OK for her too…although I suspect her inner competitive streak will pop out and she’ll want to run off – which is totally fine if you want to Shaz!

Not a lot more running planned til Sunday – 3 miles with my novices tomorrow, and 3 – 4 miler on Thursday at an easy pace, and maybe a really slow 2-3 miles on Saturday just to calm my nerves! Or a walk to the pub with hubby for a nice meal and a calming glass of red wine (just the one though…)

My next post will be after I have run 10 miles – eek – it probably won’t make much sense as I’ll be tired but full of endorphins!

Have a good running week everyone xx