Once again, the prospect of a ten-mile run on the machine was not a welcome one. I had planned to get it out of the way really early on this morning, but this didn’t happen because I sat up watching Deja Vu last night… and thus found it hard to drag myself out of bed!
Following the emergent pattern of my training, I started off at 7.7mph and celebrated each quarter-mile that I ran closer to my goal. My heart-rate climbed slowly to 170 by about the 3-mile mark and at 5 miles I paused for a slurp of water, a stretch, some jelly-babies (I had skipped breakfast and eaten only a banana) and to open the door for some fresh air. To be fair, this took 3 minutes, but I’m sure you won’t hold that against me!
With the machine now set to 7.8mph, my heart-rate took another mile to get from 124 back up to 170 and it stayed there until the 7.5-mile mark when I increased the speed to 7.9mph. Between here and the end my heart-rate hovered around 172 to 174 which is higher than last week, but still acceptable given the pace.
What is interesting is that the simple stretch that Andy/Marina showed me has resolved the issue with my hip tendon, at least over this distance… although I was aware of it hovering in the background towards the end. My focus in these runs is on making a positive and steady footfall, training my legs and my mind not to waiver, which has also helped overcome little niggly pains.
So 10 miles in 77 minutes 12 seconds (ignoring the break) is a speed of 7.77mph, which I think is a PB for me over this distance even though I wasn’t racing.
