On the Up and Up

I was late into the weekly sessions before I recommenced jogging due to a rather stiff and sore pair of legs after Saturday's exertions over the Richmond ParkRun course which produced a slow 28 minute time. Midweek I went back to Bushy intending a longer, slower jog around the perimeter track, but as it turned out I only had time for the short course done slowly. In fact I plodded around the usual track about 30 seconds faster. In terms of effort that's actually about the same as at Bushy which is an almost completely flat course compared to the hills at Richmond. Nevertheless, it went well enough at a fairly even pace of:    1) 8:48.   2) 8:58.    3) 8:59.    4) 0:51

For Thursday's session I went back to the local recreation ground with its fairly convenient all-grass perimeter of a half mile. After a warm up jog I repeated the cobbled together pyramid interval session that I tried out the previous week. Basically it's only a relatively short, easy session with the intention of getting the legs moving a bit faster than they are currently used to. Each lap being a half mile it's easy to combine or split laps into efforts. Currently they go:
Lap 1 & Lap 2 at 10k pace. ( 1x mile)
Lap 3 & Lap 4 split 2x fast with 2x jog to recover.    (1x mile)
Lap 5 & Lap 6 split 4x sprint with 4x jog to recover. (1x mile)
The whole thing being run/jogged continuously took just over the half hour, and even with Max in attendance, dogging my footsteps, it went quite well. Well enough It turned out, to make a bit of difference to the following Saturday's outing at Richmond.

In the meanwhile the Brighton Marathon people opened applications again on Thursday for their event with a further 4,000 places. The downside being that they wanted just 50p short of seventy quid for the favour of competing. That's about £15 more than the original join-up fee. This really is a lot of money for the privilege of running around the streets of Brighton and I really can't bring myself to accept that any footrace is worth that sort of money. It would have to be a helluva goodie bag. By the afternoon they were still providing a last chance to sign up for the offer but I'm afraid their emails got assigned to the trash can.

On Saturday I headed for Richmond ParkRun again with the intention of cutting my time back down to the twenty-seven minute bracket. The two efforts through the week paid off and I pulled in a time of 27:13. I had in the back of my mind that sub twenty-seven would be 'nice' but the number of runners in the first two miles and the hills in the third precluded that. Although I'd seeded myself in the start line up at about half way I still lost nearly fifteen seconds to the start. After clipping along fairly easily in the midfield pack the final mile hills got to me again and put that ever present minute on the total.  Still, the overall pace was quicker than last week and it looks as though a return to the hills is required. So, splits were :
1) 8:15.  2) 8:24.  3) 9:43.  4) 0:51

Ellie and her partner made their debut on the Hasler scene in a K2 on Sunday at the Banbury event taking their place in Division 9 against ten other crews. The course on the canal that runs through Banbury runs out and back and includes two portages in its four mile length. The event was efficiently organised and the couple of hundred competitors, in all classes, was away at minute intervals within about twenty minutes. B3C did well with several podium places spread throughout the classes. Ellie and partner completed the race with distinction in that they took third place in their class. A brilliant result for first timers. This event at Banbury put the closure on the season until May next year when B3C hosts the next event. It looks like a bit of winter training might be called for.