Running without much sleep is like driving a car without much fuel... you get along for a while without really noticing it until one day you have to pull over to the side of the road because there's nothing left.
Tuesday was a day for pulling over. Those busy days and sleepless nights came back to haunt me.
I started well. As we were re-doing the "Kenyan Run", I put myself in the slightly faster group this time. You see, my fastest 1k time is (consistently) just over 5.00 minutes...say, around 5.06 or 5.08. So when the choice came up to go in the 5.00 group or the 5.15 group I chose the 5.00 group, as previously when I had chosen the 5.15 group for the Kenyan run I felt I hadn't worked hard enough.
But then this Kenyan run was slightly different. We had 2km to run at pace across 3 different speeds, starting 1.15 sec slower than our fastest 1k time trial and getting 30sec faster each lap. So when I put myself in the 5.00 pace group, my laps were to look as follows:
Lap 1 (0-2k): 6.15min/km
Lap 2 (2-4k): 5.45min/km
Lap 3 (4-6k): 5.15min/km
The first lap was easy and I blitzed it, controlling myself slower. The second lap I did at exactly pace (even when my pace group went on to run it slightly faster)...but I struggled the entire way through this one. Within 50m of starting the 3rd lap, I knew I had no energy left. And as I thought it, it came true. I slowed considerably and conceded defeat. How frustrating! Less than a month ago I could run a 10k race at a 5.30 pace and feel that I was holding back...but today it was all I could do to shuffle through 2km of a 5.45 pace.
There was only one thing left for me to do: get a good night's sleep that night and start fresh the next day. Zzzzzz...
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