This is getting silly...

So, it appears that my improvements in 2015 are continuing at a bit of a pace. How strange..! Saturday I went to Edinburgh parkrun, to test myself on the pancake-flat course, I wanted to finish under 35 minutes if I could (should have been able to, given that the last two weeks I'd ran the hillier Falkirk and Pollock parkruns in 35:21 and 35:17 respectively), and get a bit closer to my all-time 5km PB of 34:04 obtained at Edinburgh parkrun almost 3 years ago. What actually happened was... well, I think I used the words 'speechless' and 'gobsmacked' afterwards.

I set off in the middle of the 400-strong crowd, purposely so I could be 'pulled along' over the first 500m or so, before the crowds start to thin out a little. The first 1km beeped at 6:35 - which I was pleased with. It was fast (for me), and gave me a nice cushion for coming under 35 mins, but once the main crowd was thinning and I was settling into my own run, I slowed very slightly, and ran the 2nd and 3rd kms both in 6:45. Wow! This had taken me past the halfway point of the route which I've had a mental block with in many of my previous runs there - and I'd turned into the wind a bit for the way home. I checked my HR, and it was staying around 188-190, so I knew I was working hard, but it seemed steady there, so I pushed on a little. The 4th km was 6:30. What?!! My heart rate was now staying up around 195-196, but I kept going... there's a little fork in the path for the last 400 metres at Edinburgh, and as I passed 4kms, my eyes were focussed on that fork. I thought, I've got to slow down very slightly before I get there, get my heart rate to level off a little bit, then when I get on the finish straight I'll be able to push harder down to the finish line - so for maybe a minute or so I consciously slowed my pace a little bit, before finally pushing hard on the long straight home. Edinburgh always measures long, because of the official measuring being done on the perfect racing line on a wide pathed windy route, so the 5th km beeped on my watch when I was still about 50 metres from the finish line. The 5th km was 6:22. Oh. My. Goodness. By the time I crossed the finish line, my total for the full parkrun was 33:18. .......Thirty. Three. Eighteen.

Crossing the line, I knew I'd given it everything I could, there was no way I'd have been able to run a single step more - that's quite a rare feeling for me. My heart rate was 203 when I crossed the line - it had been steadily, gently increasing the whole way, and I knew I'd worked hard for this result. A result, have I mentioned, that is 46 seconds off my all-time PB, and a whole EIGHT MINUTES off the last time I ran this event, just over 4 months ago. And another rare feeling for me was seeping through: pride.

So, Sunday came along with a bit of motivation. Yes, my 5km times are improving, and yes, I have a 10km race in 4 weeks' time, but there's also the Half Marathon two weeks after that, and I can't ignore that. So, Sunday's aim was to run/walk 8 miles. I chose to use 4 miles from the actual HM route, as an out-and-back, so ran from Leith Links to Musselburgh along the Portobello and Joppa seafront. This was a "Long Run" (and it really is, to me, even though many folk reading this would consider 8 miles very short!), so I purposely set out at a slow, steady pace, something akin to what I was doing the couple of times I've ran 60 minutes recently. My heart rate settled at around 160-165 bpm, and I tried to keep it in that range. because as daft as it sounds, I've finally learned over these last 3 weeks how to do that!!! :-) Mainly, I had no expectations on my run/walk splits for this run, but equally I didn't want to enforce a walk just for the sake of some sort of structure; I decided to go with what I 'felt'. The cadence chart below shows how much I ran compared to walking, and shows one main thing: after 1 hour, my thinking fell apart. This felt a little like uncharted territory in the 'still running' area, after my recent runs, and I struggled mentally to even keep running for more than 2 to 3 minutes at a time. My heart rate never got higher than 165-ish, so physically I was managing, but mentally I was returning to familiar ways.


At first, I got annoyed with myself for this - but being self-derogatory and negative during a run is obviously not where I want to be this year, so I had a bit of a think about this, and came out in a much better place. Ultimately, I covered 8 miles in 1:42, which is a very decent pace for a slow run for me, and still bodes well for a good HM time in 6 weeks' time. Plus, feeling 'comfortable' with 60 minutes of effort is brilliant, and still very new for me, so what's not to say that in a few months, I won't be just as 'comfortable' (ha) with 2 hours of running?? Evert day is progress, and I can't expect too much too soon. It's still a head game, in a big way, but I'm still on my journey, and still excited to see what I can achieve.

Davie and Julie came through in the afternoon, and we went out for dinner. I blew my kcals for the day, big time, on a huge burger with blue cheese and bacon, and chips and crisp onion rings dipped in mayonnaise... and I don't regret it for a moment. If I were a weightlifter, I'd call it a 'refeed' - but regardless the concept is the same. It's good for my metabolism, I reckon, and moreover, it tasted bloody delicious - and a huge part of addressing my poor thinking around food this year is removing guilt from eating things I "shouldn't". Plus, it was a meal out with friends, instead of sat alone in my flat. Win!!