A return to 10k Monday morning

[Jericho2332]

Good morning runners! I hope we all had great weekends? Yep it's Monday already 😱 still no work regularly for me, they keep saying it will pick up soon but this is half a year of this now and no sign of it yet. It did mean however that I could roll out of bed a little later today and plan my run. Decided to wait until 9:30 before heading out, knowing all the school kids would be of my route by then and the traffic would be a little quieter.

Gear on, water drank, warm up walk, stretches and off I went! Purposely kept it slow to start as hadn't decided on what distance to run but knew it was going to be longer than 5k. Steady pace I thought to myself, see how we feel after a 3k warm up. Kept the pace nice and even and at 3k felt good and decided I was going to go for the 10k today, only ran it once recently the rest have been short 5k runs. Just dance music blazing today, no coaching. Time went quickly though and my 5k time was much better than I thought it would be at around 28mins, wasn't so long ago I had to practically sprint to get a 28 minute 5k and now do it at "steady" pace 😁 I smiled to myself as I thought "I love running" 🤣 my legs certainly started to feel it as the Kms went on and the gremlins did pop in my head around the 7km mark suggesting that I stop and walk the rest of the way as I'd probably done enough... Hell no Mr Gremlin!

By the 8k mark I was back focused and hoping for a strong finish, I felt strong and that I'd more or less maintained my pace. The up hill section at around 9k didn't phase me, stayed strong and tried to speed up for a last km sprint when something weird happened, music stopped and watch vibrated warning me my heart rate had spiked! Never happened to me before and wasn't sure what was going on, it certainly slowed me down however! 190 flashed up on my watch which didn't look good, I was then getting my phone out and messing with settings trying to get the music back on etc, plus trying to take some deep breaths and not panic myself so the big finish didn't happen, though it was the fastest split of my 10k, it could have been a lot quicker! 🤣

Then the amazing news that I'd hit my 2nd best 10k time ever, 57mins dead on! 😁 I think without the disturbance of the weird heart rate spike I could have been on for my previous PB of 56.22 🤷🏼‍♂️ but nevermind, very happy with a great run which I really enjoyed 😁

Have a great day all, happy running!

[Irishprincess Graduate10]

Look at that pacing! Great work, really well done. And a fab time too! What do you have for breakfast? 🤔💪

[Jericho2332 Graduate10 in reply to Irishprincess]

Thank you 😁 just a glass of water before I run, no secret super foods 🤣

[Skiddle1 Graduate10]

Well done on completing 10K.. please don't label 5k as a 'short run'... It still feels fairly long to me at this stage 🤣😂. I cannot wait until I feel ready enough to do longer. Although, I am pleased that I am able to do 5k in 30 minutes. 😁. As for the heart rate warning, I get that a lot, managed to get as high as 196bpm... I was worried too at first and wondered if I was heading for cardiac arrest but the advice was that so longs I don't feel dizzy and I'm not panting too hard and I can still converse at my pace, no chest pain etc etc then I probably have a higher maximum heart rate than the average. If you start to feel not so good and you get that warning then maybe it's time to slow down and rest and don't push yourself too hard. ☺️

[nowster Graduate10 in reply to Skiddle1]

But 5km is a short run. 🤣

If future me had said that to past me exactly a year ago I'd have thought I had gone crazy. At that point I was just about to start my third attempt at C25K.

[Skiddle1 Graduate10 in reply to nowster]

I can't wait until I can say that! 😂🏃‍♀️

[nowster Graduate10 in reply to Skiddle1]

If you keep up the habit, give it six to nine months. 😉

[Jericho2332 Graduate10 in reply to Skiddle1]

Haha thank you, I've managed half marathon distance so 5k is a short run 🤣 takes me 3k to warm up properly lol like Nowster says though, of you had told me a year ago that I'd be running londg distances and consider 5k almost a warm up run, I would have laughed!

It's amazing how quickly you can pick up your times and distances, just don't do what I've done recently and take your foot off the gas and not keep up with the running routine 👍🏻

[nowster Graduate10 in reply to Jericho2332]

I've had to take a few steps backward over the last year, too. Having got to 18km, I had to drop back a bit after pulling the adductor in late April.

3km is my easy short run. I do sprint intervals at 6.5km. My routine weekly longer run is 10km or more. After the event a week on Sunday, I'll be concentrating on trying to get that pesky HM.

[Jericho2332 Graduate10 in reply to nowster]

I've been lucky with injuries so far 🤞🏻 I just got a bit lazy with my training and diet 😂

Hopefully I'm back on track now, though that half marathon distance does seem a million miles away now! Done it once so I'm sure I can get there again and I'm sure you will too 👍🏻👍🏻

[GailXrunning]

Reading you posts in reverse again. It’s a good week for you. Amazing!