I woke to rather blustery rain, which wasn't what the BBC Weather had promised at all. So I settled with a slice of toast and a mug of black coffee to read the papers, hoping the rain clouds would pass. Sure enough, they did so I donned my kit and set off.
Today I checked that my HRM monitor was registering before finishing my warm up. My goal was to Maff my run, slowing down when my HR rose above 135. I set off and immediately had a kit malfunction – when I put my phone inside my belt pocket, somehow it dialled up voicemail. An unintended stop to sort that out. I discarded the abortive start on my Garmin and started anew.
The sun came out and the conditions were near perfect, although the southerly breeze presented an unwelcome headwind on one leg of the run. I found that I breached my HR target within a few hundred metres and I struggled to find a comfortable pace that gave me my target HR. I think it was about the 9th kilometre before I finally got control without wildly overshooting. To maintain 135 bpm feels like a ridiculously low pace – when I was running at 145 bpm I wasn't breathless, so I settled on this as a more realistic target.
I've been reading a few running books lately and a recurring lesson is mental toughness so I decided around 7 k in that I would keep going for 10 k today. I told myself that by keeping my run aerobic all the way I would have the reserves and could smash it.
For some reason, my Garmin stopped vibrating on the kilometre mark so I changed the display from HR back to distance/time/pace so that I could see how far I had to go. At 9.45 km I decided 'to hell with your HR, just go for it' so I ran a sustainable yet briskish pace to finish in 1:05:52.
I'm planning to keep up running the distances in the B210K programme, to get the miles in my legs and to build aerobic capacity. But I'm also really tempted by barefoot running, which will require work on my technique and initially cutting back on the distances. But first I'm going to consolidate.
Cliche alert!: I can't believe that back in June I was on the couch, watching the world cup on TV (drinking lager) and something (a side-on view of my paunch in the mirror probably) inspired me to start C25K. I graduated C25K on 12 August and now, just a couple of months later I've done 10k, dropping 8 kg and 2 inches off my waist in the process. If I can do it, anyone can. Happy days!
Thanks to everyone for your inspiring posts. It's so much easier when you're doing it together!