Don't you wish you had a crystal ball sometimes? What's the weather going to do, how am I going to feel, should I reschedule this run for later, maybe we can get away with shorts? Not! Forecast today was heavy rainfall warning with strong SE winds and temps around 3-5C (40F). But all morning it was calm with only a light drizzle, that is up until I started today's run. And then, like the weather gods had been just waiting for little ole me the skies opened up and the wind started to howl.
Plan was for 9 miles with 10x800. After a 10 minute warmup and with the rain steadily increasing began with the hard bits in about 3:10 with a 1:40 recovery for a total of 5 minutes for each set. The 1st five felt relatively good with the 20-35k wind at my back, in fact it seemed almost bearable. Unlike a track situation with the clock pressing you to meet certain splits, doing them by time allows you to simply go as hard as you feel (or are able on the particular day). However, you can also 'cheat' alot easier as there are no signposts to keep track.
Of course, after the turnaround point things really started to go downhill in more ways than one. For the next 25 minutes I got the heavy rainfall and high winds exactly as predicted. Even the traffic on the highway was slowed to a crawl but nowhere near the crawl I was reduced to. The last 5 intervals were considerably slower but the effort was no less intense. Finished up with an easy 20 minutes for a total time of 1:18 with the weather clearing and the rain stopped! The drowned rat crawled back in his hole. Perhaps I could've picked my spot a little better? Maybe next time...
The ACT Masters' 5000m Championships
7 months ago
4 comments:
Yikes! Don't you hate it when you do the real work in nasty weather and then the day clears off! But - you did great sticking to it, way to go! 10x800 is a torture:)
I run my intervals by time on the road as well, and it simply is up to yourself to make sure you run them strong enough. Mind you, I've never even attempted 10x800.
Bad luck with with the weather, I sometimes seem to have a knack of picking those kind of conditions, too.
I was out in that rain too. Ran 10.8 at lunch and the last 4.8 were in a downpour. I was soaked to the bone!
That's just nasty. But I bet your crawl is still faster than my run. Way to stick with it.
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