Speed and reflections

Where has the week gone? Behind me, that's where! And so I'm a little bit behind on my blogging. I'll sum up the week for you as best I can.

Tuesday - speed session. A magical session, truly! This was the first time since I returned (somewhat reluctantly) to running in June that I felt AWESOME! Imagine that - after 4 weeks holidaying (and 1 week pretending I was still holidaying) it took me 5 weeks of training to feel like I was back on track with my running. Previously my speed sessions have consisted of me fading halfway through despite my best efforts.
But not on this day! On this particular Tuesday I was feeling bang on the money. It helped that we had only 500m reps with a 500m recovery. I love short reps! But my worry lay in the sheer number of reps I'd have to do (8) at a pace pre-set by my coach (2.19min).
Yet I hit through all of them with two awesome gals and not one of them was at 2.19. Yep, they were all under! My times varied between 2.12 to 2.18 which is a bit of a large variance but I was happy that they did not get consistently worse. If memory serves me correct, my split times for each rep was as follows:
2.17 / 2.18 / 2.12 / 2.17 / 2.18 / 2.15 / 2.13 / 2.15
So if anything I was holding back the first couple of reps. The wise Coach Linda gave me that advice after looking at my other speed session rep times. She said it would be better for me to hold back a bit at the beginning and get negative splits on my reps. For a person with very little self-control, this was quite the challenge! But she was right - it was definitely worth it.

Thursday - endurance session. Once again, I joined the pace group of those gals preparing for the Brisbane Marathon on August 4th. Their plan was 6min/km for the +7k out-and-back we were running, which fit in perfectly with my endurance run scheduled. I say +7k because that doesn't factor in the warm-up/cool down part of the run.
There were seven of us running together this morning. Sometimes it's nicer to have an even number to pair off better for chatting (er, running) buddies. Fellow runners make great sounding boards for all of life's hiccups and triumphs and questions. But I don't mind an uneven number because sometimes when running I just enjoy the peace of having a quiet mind. Sometimes the best answers to life's questions lie in the silence of the morning.

Sunrise at Doomben Half Marathon 2010 - my first half