I pushed myself today and nearly made 5k

[swanscot]

But not quite. I'm on W7R2, but since I'd run 28 mins on my previous run I thought I try for 30 minutes running today. I'd walked my usual route yesterday with my hiking GPS and knew exactly where the 1, 2 and 3 km points were; I turn round at 3km and run back for 2km, leaving one kilometre of uphill back to my house for the warm down walk.

Today I decided to run to the 3km turn around point and run back as far as I could - keeping going until I reached 30mins. At the field gate turn-around point I realised I'd run the 3 km fairly quickly and secretly hoped I'd be able to squeeze out enough energy to make it to 5 km in 30 minutes. But I soon found out my body had had enough of being pushed! The last 1 km was really tough and I had to stop short bang on 30 minutes. By this time I was moving so slowly that it was farcical to even pretend to be running. According to my GPS file, I managed 4.7km.

Now that I know I can run for 30 mins at almost 6mins/km pace, I'm going to ease right back on the speed and try for for some easy(!?) 30 mins runs, choosing different routes - some with small hills - and not bother to measure the distance. Well, I'll do this for the last week 7 and week 8 runs, but I may be tempted to step it up again for week 9

I don't mean this post to sound boastful, nor to be demoralising to those who's current pace is slower. As someone who was fairly fit before I started, I wanted to push myself and I'm sharing this because even us slightly faster than tortoise runners (I was overtaken by another runner today!) really struggle sometimes

(I'm wondering if the above fields of barley which I pass will be harvested before I complete week 9)