The legs felt surprisingly good on Monday after the Bristol Half the day before – confirmation I think that it was tired legs that slowed me down in the final few miles, and that I could have maintained pace if I was fresher.
Indeed on Tuesday I was flying at the track. The session originally called for 5x600m at 5K pace, but after a first rep of 2:06 I decided to just go for it, and ended up running each interval within a second of that first time, averaging 5:36 min/mi. Felt good to have a proper blast out after so much slower marathon work.
The medium-long run the following day also went well, which confirmed the decision to do a parkrun on Saturday. Wasn’t sure how the legs were going to hold up at speed, so decided to just see how I felt once I got going. I started out too fast as usual but felt pretty good. After losing 1st place about 1km in, the guy slowly pulled away leaving me to a solo time-trial. Thoughts of the long run the next day made me decide to ease back just slightly, to probably 90-95% effort. Pleased to hit 19:00 given all the miles in my legs, and that I wasn’t going all out.
Then on Sunday my penultimate big long run, 23 sunny miles down through the Royal Parks and back. Was originally scheduled to be 21, but I felt good so pushed on for an extra couple of miles. Slightly bittersweet as I recently made the decision to relocate away from London, so won’t do this route many times again. Will miss the sights on my runs although won’t miss the crowds – think it was changing of the guard and it was rather busy around The Mall.
Overall another great week of training, just one more big one next week before I start to taper down. Just four weeks to go now…