Week 8: Tuesday - on/off Ks
Winter is here
Slept well. In fact, it was a struggle to get up. I had to set an alarm for 0630 which is super rare for me; rarer still, I snoozed the bastard. Mind you, I’d spent ages last night looking at the upcoming workouts in tandem with the weather forecasts and trying to figure out the least worst way to arrange everything this week.
I’m not sure I’ve got it right.
On/Off Ks
Verbose preamble
I absolutely did not want to run this morning. Totally 100% not in the mood for it. But, I mean, it’s right there in the calendar and the plan. I can’t not do it. I suspect I would feel properly awful about myself if I ever skipped a workout for reasons as trivial such as “I’m tired and the weather is bleak”.
I had gamed it as much as I could by shifting the shortest, easiest workout of the week to today:
- 1.5km warm up
- 2x:
- 1k @ 5:30/km
- 1k @ 4:55/km
- 1km cool down
The forecast had been for it to be raining and getting ever colder - highest temperature today supposedly at 3am.
When I finally got up and into my kit it was bleak as hell. Dark and absolutely pissing down. I checked three separate weather apps to try and gauge what it would be like outside and they all kinda disagreed. Either the rain was on the verge of stopping, or it was going to remain heavy, or it was going to be light. Maybe it was 6ºc outside, or maybe it was 2ºc. Maybe with the wind it felt as low as -4ºc, or maybe it felt above freezing.
None of this was helping me choose what to wear. In the end I went for a long sleeve top but not the waterproof coat; my normal baseball cap rather than warmer beanie; shorts rather than tights; gloves. So a kind of nod towards shitty weather but not paying full respect to the worst of the possibilities.
As I stepped out of the house, it seemed better than any of the forecasts had predicted. Temperature perfectly tolerable, it wasn’t raining, there was barely any wind. Then I started running.
Stop putting things off and just get running
Oh. There is wind. And it’s quite cold. Aaaaand it’s started raining again, great. To be honest it wasn’t particularly bad, the warm up and first rep were totally fine and even the faster second rep felt largely OK. I mean it was a noticeable step up in pace but lethargy was more to blame for any struggle than the weather.
Started the third rep way slower than target. Really felt the need to recover from the 4:55/km, not helped by the last 200m of it having been into a headwind because, yeah, by now the wind had really got up AND the rain got harder. Plus I was in the twistiest-turniest bit of the route. Eventually got my pace somewhere back towards target, in readiness for the 4th and final rep.
The 4th and final rep coincided with the wind whipping up another notch AND the rain becoming properly torrential. I couldn’t see through my glasses so had to hold them in my hand. It was absolutely foul and I hated it. I’m sure I was mostly keeping up to pace as I ran away from the leisure centre, but I knew there was no shelter in this direction and since everything was so unpleasant, I pulled a U-turn with 300m to go. This appears to have caused havoc with my pacing as the graph shows.
Oh well. To be honest given how I dreaded getting out at all, I was “happy” to have actually ticked the run off. My cooldown was around the lake, with the rain having all but stopped. It was slow, and the long sleeved shirt, already thicker material than most of my shirts, was totally drenched and really weighing me down.
Walking back home via the shop was a cold affair, and I hate how useless my iPhone’s screen is when it and/or my hands are wet. Meh.
The 4 timed reps ended up being:
- 5:31 (+1s)
- 5:03 (+8s)
- 5:46 (+16s)
- 5:13 (+18s)
Looks bad, but no, fuck off, I’m not having that. Dodgy signal (especially around the U-turn) and shitty weather definitely stole some time off me. I’m claiming success.
I do not expect success later in the week.