Running with Jack

It was rainy and a cool 19C/66F as I headed out the door for my training run last night. My goal was a comfortable recovery run, as I had a rather long – long run on Saturday. But as the rain stopped and the sun peeked out from behind the clouds my legs had other ideas. I dropped into a nice comfortable pace, briefly enjoying the sun’s rays before they again deserted me. Yesterday was a stressful day at work, lots of annoying little tasks keeping me away from what I really should be working on. I carried these thoughts with me in my head as I swung around my 16K/10M route. My legs were singing “Born to be Wild”, my heart “Do, Run, Run” and my mind – which should have been singing “Take it Easy” – was thinking about work.

About the 12K point my legs started to remember that they had just run 36K/22M on Saturday and started whining. I guess this brought me back to reality, looking at my watch I realized I had been running at an average 5:30/K (8:51/M) pace, not exactly a recovery pace (for me at least). I attempted to slow down a little, but this didn’t work out to well. I still finished with an average pace of 5:35/K (9:00/M).

Oh well, my legs feel pretty good today, a little tired but no soreness or anything. Now, how should I list that in my spreadsheet – too fast for a recovery run or for an easy run as well, I guess it was a tempo run – 25 seconds faster per kilometer (39 seconds per mile) than my planned marathon pace.

Very satisfying anyway and it also helped clear my head somewhat.