Salisbury 10 Mile

Close up of snowflakes

At the moment, I’m really struggling to find time to write this blog, but maybe that’s a good thing as it means that I’m busy organising my life and training.

The key event for me at the weekend was Salisbury 10 – a local 10 mile race that is part of the Hampshire Road Race League. 10 miles is the only distance that I didn’t get a PB at last year, so I was determined that I was going to do well. I started out strong and managed to do the first two kilometres at 4:53 pace. My cadence was 96 for the second km and my average cadence for the race was 92. I knew I was doing well when I hit the 3 mile marker in 25:07 (my 5k PB is 25:08) and I achieved a PB when I reached the 5 mile marker in 43:07… However, I also knew at that point that there was no way that I would match up to Irene’s amazing 84 minute run last year.

Salisbury 10 mile race number
Salisbury 10 mile race number

I pushed on, but as usual, a negative split was unlikely. At about 8.5 miles the runner that I passed earlier in the race went past me, but I didn’t want to quit. As I was heading towards the athletics track, where the race finishes, I saw Stu, Rikki and Dean running towards me. I threw them my gloves and carried on running. I caught up with the other club runner as we went onto the track and decided to make a last ditch effort to sprint. She cheered me on in a sportsmanlike way and I managed to sprint about 100m before reverting to my distance runner’s shuffle. As I crossed the line I checked my watch: 1:27:44, a 1:15 PB. Not quite as good as I’d hoped for, but I’ll settle for that!

Running in the snow

On Monday evening, I was expecting to lead a sprint session with Irene and Group B. Unfortunately, the extreme cold weather (it snowed all day) meant that very few people turned up to training. Three ladies were dithering about rejoining Group B, but in the end we decided to join Group A* with Mike and do a warm up before breaking down the 5k parkrun route into manageable sections and to discuss strategies for tackling them. This worked out well and meant that no-one ended up standing around for too long getting cold.

Straight afterwards was a Run Leader meeting followed by a Coaching Management Team meeting, so it was after 10pm when I got home and I ended up going to bed late. I really must make more of an effort to get to bed early.

Run Camp

It was hard work getting up yesterday morning and we ended up being late for Run Camp. The warm up was quite brisk and then Stu, Jenny, Rosie and I moved over to the usual path for some activities. We were focussing on the width of our stride, which was very odd as it meant that I was purposely running with my feet further apart than usual. It felt very unnatural. We also did some more hopping over hurdles, but as my right leg still wasn’t quite right, I sat out of some of them. (Well, I just ran past them).

Food diary

Yesterday evening was a rest evening, so I did lots of organising. I decided to try to use up some of the food that is in the fridge. I’ve also signed up for an appointment with a nutritionist on 27th March, so I need to keep a food diary for the next week. I know that food diaries are usually thought to be inaccurate as people under-report what they eat, but I know mine will be accurate as I cannot lie. As a consequence, I am likely to eat well this week and hope that it will get me back on track for Paris Marathon.

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