Wednesday 23 February 2011

Club Stag run report

It's been a good week so far and hopefully this will continue. On Sunday I went out with friend Idai on our ElliptiGOs together with the MK cycle touring club for a 50 miler around the beautiful country side and villages of Buckinghamshire. A great ride and 20 miles further than I had previously ridden on the GO. The pace of the touring cyclist is a leisurely one to put it mildly so this suited me just fine. There is no way I would be keepin up with he keenest roadies who are probably averaging nearer 25mph rather than the 12mph that this group averaged. A great training ride which sets Idai and I up perfectly for the MK60 in 3 weeks time.

A nice slow recovery run on Monday was followed by my weekly commute to work on the GO. So 95 miles covered and it's only Wednesday. Tonight was the monthly club Stag run (3 lap around a park and Ind Est - 2.5 miles in total). And this was my best stag run in ages!!! So you might also be thinking that it was my fastest. Wrong. It was actually my slowest time of the last 5 stag runs which will go back to April last year. And this is the thing - running fast does not always = a good run. This was my best run because I felt in control of my pace rather than chasing a time as yet not achieved (sub 14 minutes) but fallig way shirt of he goal with the pace tailing off from the 2nd lap onwards. Instead I paced this one and got faster with every lap. First mile a 6:06; second mile a 5:53; and pace for the last 1/2 mile 5:41. This is withot doubt the most satisfying way to run and finish a race getting faster with every step instead of dying out with each. Yes my pace is slower, and I'm not as fast as I was (at least not tonight). My PB for the stag is 14.04. Tonight was 14.55 but an extremely satisfying 15 minutes of running. Compare this with my mood in the last stag when I ran 14:30 (faster) yet I crossed the line and shouted **** such was my dissapointment with my time then. So clearly time does not matter, but how you approach a race and how you execute the plan does. Job done.

So things are shaping up nicely. I'm getting he miles in on the GO and getting in some quality runs too. 11 miles tonight, having run 7 miles before the Stag race followed by 2 mile warm down after. So this should see me build up nicely for the 3 events in March which looks like:
6 March - Leighton 10k - gunning for sub 37
13 March - MK60 - On the ElliptiGO. Taking this one really easy with the 12
hour race the following weekend.
20 March - Lightning12hr - the big one! Back to defend my crown and want to go one ebtter than last year and complete 13 laps (130k).

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