Back on Line - The Big Catch Up

The PC went on the blink and I've been busy so it just wasn't possible to update this blog. I have still been training and competing and will now attempt to get things up to date.

Wednesday 13 June - 4 x 1 km with 2 min rest intervals

This was meant to be 4 x 800 m but getting to the track is difficult so it was easier to do 1 km reps along the footpath.  My programme said 85% effort and I figured that if I was going well I should be able to do 1 km in 5:40 so 6:00 km or even 6:05 would be quite good.  I was happy to achieve an average of 6:01.

The splits were 6:05, 5:55, 5:56, 6:04

4 x 1 km with 2 min rest intervals

Saturday 9 June - 15 km National Championship

We drove up to New Plymouth on Thursday to give us plenty of time to recover from the 5 hour drive before the race on Saturday. We were lucky to have generous friends to stay with from our time of living in this  city.

I planned not to go out too hard in this race but did try to stay on the back of a group that I thought I might be able to keep up with. This lead me to doing 30:30 for the first 5 km which was a bit ahead of my goal of 6:10 per km.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to hold that pace and the group gradually went out of sight.  With about 4 laps to go I noticed Sue Hoskin in the distance and tried to increase my pace but dropped the idea of catching up when I went past the board after 13 km and saw I had two red cards. I did want to achieve a PB and managed to knock 69 seconds of my time from last year, completing the event in 5th place in 1:35:18.  I had hoped for a couple of minutes faster but at least I was not DQ'd.

15 km National Championships

The video below was taken by my hosts approximately 3 km into the race.

Wednesday 6 June - 10 km

I left my GPS watch at home this day so I used a bit of guess work as to where the 5 km turn around point was. I estimated that I was walking at around 7:30 min/km pace and completed the walk in 1:14:13.  I remember thinking that the distance was likely to have been nearer to 10.5 km.

Sunday 3 June - leg 2 of Aurora Marathon

This was a handicap race with the start time based on the competitors estimated time. Leeane did a good job of the first half marathon, finishing about 6 mins faster than her estimate.  I was quite surprised at the pace I achieved early in my leg, probably due to being motivated to catch up to the walkers ahead of me (a couple of these turned out to be runners).  I enjoyed the scenic walk through the valley and was grateful that my leg was relatively flat compared to the first leg.  I did enjoy the steep downhill section near the end where I passed quite a number of walkers. In this event competitors finishing too much faster than their estimate are disqualified. I found out later that this rule was applied to the solo competitors but not to the teams. It looks like the winners of the pairs must have beaten their estimate by a considerable amount since they were some way ahead of me and we were 11 minutes quicker than our estimate. I completed my half of the marathon in 2:19:59.

Aurora Marathon - Lap Two

Friday 1 June - 10 km Kickdown

In my previous two attempts at this workout I started out too fast, made my first increase too much and then struggled to increase in the last half of the workout.  I set myself the target of averaging 7:20, 7:00, 6:40 and 6:20. I found the first half of the workout very easy and surprised myslef with what I was able to achieve in the second half. the total time was 1:06:59 with average pace 6:42 and average HR 149 bpm. My splits were:

2.5 km  18:16  (average 7:18)
5.0 km  17:20  (average 6:56)
7.5 km  16:09  (average 6:28)
10 km   15:14  (average 6:06)

Wednesday 30 May - 10 km with 2 x 5 min @ 10 km pace

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/188828758#.T9m6VEm8dDs.blogger

Tuesday 29 May - 12 km Training Walk

I have been carrying a sore right hamstring for quite some time which tends to make me slow to warm up. I was pleased to achieve an average pace of 6:47 for this workout and to find that I am no longer fatiguing at the 7 - 8 km mark as I had been previously. My average HR was 141 bpm.

12 km Training Walk 

Sunday 27 May - 20 km Training Walk

The weather forecast wasn't good and there was a strong northerly wind blowing. Philip and I drove down to the Hutt Road to get onto the flat and headed south into town, round the bays to Kilbernie through to Lyall Bay and round the coast to Island Bay. It started to shower about an hour into the walk so buy the time we reached the cafe at Island Bay we were cold and hungry and stopped 1.4 km short of our intended distance. We had a nice lunch, a long read of the Sunday paper then caught the bus back to our car.

20 km Training Walk

Wednesday 23 May - 5 km Fartlek

I was grateful for a light week after having two full on programmes the previous two weeks.  This workout felt pretty good and I was pleased with the pace.  Overall time 30:38, average pace 6:09, average HR 149 bpm.

The splits were:
5:58
3:17 + 2:52 = 6:09
3:20 + 2:53 = 6:13
3:16 + 3:01 = 6:17
3:09 + 2:54 = 6:03

5 km Fartlek