After a few pleasing weeks of training since my rest up following the marathon, I made a fairly late call to run the Cheshire 10k this weekend just gone. Having cancelled holiday plans for the week, it meant that I had time on my hands and a free weekend to fill - knowing that I had ran the course twice previously (and PB'd on both occasions) I was fairly confident of going well.
Over the last couple of weeks I have started to do more of my pace work and harder sessions with Joe Monk. Anybody that knows Joe will be aware that he is a very promising distance runner, but he is developing quickly too and is well on the way to being a class act already. Working in tandem with him has enabled me to push myself out of my comfort zone a bit more than I can do on my own. We have worked together in training well so far and get on well too - which is always a bonus(!) - so hopefully this is the start of something beneficial to both of us moving forwards.
The last two Tuesday's have seen us put together sessions of: 1) 10 x half a mile off 60 second recovery - on this session each rep took an average of 2:23 (or 4:46 m/pm moving pace); 2) 5 x 1 kilometre off a minute recovery - this was a session deliberately chosen to be shorter and sharper in order to polish up a little bit ahead of the race, I finished up with an average moving pace of 4:42 minute mileing which was very pleasing and a good indicator that I was in decent nick for the weekend.
Sandwiched between these two efforts, we also met up on Saturday morning for a fartlek session around the docks. We did 3 sets of 4/3/2 minute reps off a one and a half minute jog recovery. We averaged around 5:10 pace for the efforts and clocked over ten miles in total.
My Thursday tempos with Rob were also continuing to prove pleasing as we got a little bit quicker still over our last 4 mile effort, clocking 20:18 for an average pace of 5:04. The final session before Cheshire was stripped back and ran relaxed over 3.1 miles at 5:21 pace - I did feel a touch leggy though and so decided to limit myself to a 20 minute easy jog on the Friday evening before race day.
Cheshire 10k is a fab course and I always seem to run well there. It is traffic free and ran along nice rolling country lanes, there are no hills as such and so you are able to get into a nice solid and consistent rhythm. Unfortunately for me it fell on a busy weaken of races this time around and so the depth of quality in the field was effected.
I ran most of the race without company and so found the middle section of the race a bit of a slog once I lost sight of the runners ahead of me. I dropped 10 seconds in the third mile which impacted my time.
I recovered well enough and finished strongly, so much so that despite the poor third mile I was only 3 seconds shy of my pb, and agonisingly close to a sub 31 run as I passed over the finish line in 31:04 for fourth place.
This was something of a bonus race for me, as it was one I hadn't anticipated doing, and so it is good to see that I am in this sort of shape with another good month of training ahead of me before the next big target race at Telford 10k in December.
Before then I will be travelling to the Forest of Dean for a weekend of running, having been invited to take part in an England Athletics elite performance programme for the marathon. It is a fantastic opportunity for me, as there will be some seriously quality runners and coaches of the highest possible calibre there to learn off and seek advice from. I am sure it will give me an even bigger push to carry on seeking to improve my all round running game that bit more.
Stats for the last fortnight...
Week 1 -
Total mileage for the week: 72.5
Average pace for the week (m/pm): 6:24
Total mileage so far this month (October): 280
Total mileage for 2017: 3000
Average miles per day 2017: 9.97
Week 2 -
Total mileage for the week: 63.5
Average pace for the week (m/pm): 6:26
Total mileage for the month of October: 299
Total mileage so far this month (November): 44.5
Total mileage for 2017: 3063.5
Average miles per day 2017: 9.95
