4:59/km – my best ever average race pace!

My second swimming session with SUTRI was much more successful than my first session. This was because the pool was far less crowded. There were three of us in the slow lane: Rebecca (who I met last week), a young guy who was just learning and me. In total, we swam 1500m, mainly broken into 25m and 50m reps. We did quite a few drills, with fairly long recovery times, which I found helpful. I’ll definitely be going back again.

Southampton parkrun

Today was my first ‘race’* since my training holiday, and it went better than I expected. My 5k PB is 25:08 (with my Southampton parkrun PB being 25:14, which I ran on 30/11/13).

I’ve only run under 26 minutes 5 times at Southampton parkrun – this was my 3rd fastest time on the course. In total, I’ve now run under 26 minutes 11 times. I felt quite strong and think that if I keep training, eat well and start in a better position then I might be able to achieve a PB. It was also the first event where I’ve managed to maintain a sub 5min/km pace 😀

I love the stats that parkrun produces. I was 35/178 women, which means that I was in the top 20% of the female runners, and in the top half of the entire field. I was 3/26 women in my age category – yay! Podium finish!

Hockey

This afternoon, Stuart and I went to watch our nephew, J,  play hockey. Given that he’s only 14 and his team were playing against the University of Southampton team, he did really well. It was raining really hard, so we took cover at the main stand. This meant that we were trying to watch J’s match on a pitch beyond where an American football match was taking place. It’s not a game that I understand, but I think Stu appreciated it!

Christmas wish list

I’ve also been adding lots of items to my Christmas wish list today. This blog post – The 10 must-read cycling books of 2014 – has inspired several of my choices. I read Gironimo! a few weeks ago and loved it… it made me feel that I have the ability to restore a vintage bicycle.

Something that isn’t on my Christmas wish list is an entry to The Swimmer – at least not until Spring or early Autumn. It sounds like a fascinating event, where a half marathon is broken up with six open water swims. Thanks to Teri for sharing a recent Guardian article about it: The perfect joy of swimming and running through London.

Forward planning

Stu has now booked flights for our trip to Japan next year and he’s also booked a lot of the accommodation. Firming up this part of our plans means that I can start to plan my spring events more carefully now. It’s very exciting and I can’t help but feel that I ought to go back to studying Japanese as I’ve got a bit rusty.

I’ve also booked a consultation about laser eye surgery, which I’m hoping might make triathlons easier… although I saw my optician today for a contact lens check up and he suggested just using daily disposable lenses. I’m going to find out what they say at the consultation before making any decisions. It would be wonderful to wake up and be able to see without glasses. It really is something that could change my life.

*Yes, I know that parkrun isn’t technically a race, but I was racing myself 🙂