A last minute decision to train to today and a damn good decision at that! I was scheduled for a rest day but was feeling good all day after last weeks tinkering and asked Mrs O if I could head out for a quickie early evening. The answer was yes so off into a warm up I went.
Now I wasn’t expecting fireworks with the weather being as it is. Temp – hot, humidity – high, that’s all I needed to know as I opened the garage to be greeted by a torrent of warm air. Oh well just a training row and see where we go was the thought.
Warm up felt nice and pushed out past 4km with some bursts, hmmm legs feeling light, arms and back no signs of DOMS, heart rate not bad, target erm no idea lets just set off and see where we are after the first 10.
So after the first 10 I found myself sitting just off PB (finishing) pace with a very light handle. Legs were behaving until around the half way stage when they started to make an appearance. A glance at the heart rate confirmed I was cooking hard but it didn’t feel like it to be honest – I was in a nice rhythm and was grinding through the minutes one by one.
12 minutes to go and the realisation of a PB was on. The excitement and anticipation was equal, the only problem was it was starting to bite. On a positive all I had to do was hold rather than push as I was on PB split. Holding however was getting tougher and tougher each minute.
10 came and went and I began to squeeze a bit more, PB had gone it was now time to chase down the Wulf. I knew he had stuck in a blistering time a few weeks back but genuinely couldn’t remember his split – all I knew it was faster than mine.
From 8 down it was getting pretty nasty, I knew I had no sprint in me today because of the faster average pace. Just maintain the pace I thought, the average split is on target, just bloody hold! Looking at the screen shot below I was actually neg splitting but only by 1sec/500m which is all I needed and all I dared try. I broke it down the best I could until I was looking at the last 3.
2 x 90secs I thought as I went through but was hurting bad. Thoughts of will this ever end creeped in even with just 180 seconds remaining. When should I go full throttle? I was on the edge so it couldn’t be any time soon, last 60 secs counting the strokes down, any sign of increasing the pace? No! Last 20 secs, now I’ll go – not much but head down for the last few and across the line.
Heart rate confirmed at around 95% for the last 11 minutes tells you all you need to know – memory’s of Boston to anyone who read my World Championship report.
Since my 30 min PB at the beginning of June I have had a token effort 30 min training piece and a weak HD not so long ago so this is a nice step in the right direction for me.
Over to you again Wulfman ……
30min 8889m [1.41.2]
