Following on from Wakefield...

Hi. I have decided to do this to try and keep myself motivated with my running and hopefully achieve a good half marathon time in September and a new PB at the end of November. Hopefully...!

Two weeks ago I ran the Wakefield City 10K. It was the first race I have done this year and it was a last minute decision as I had been ill for about two weeks at that point and wasn't sure whether I was fit enough to run it let alone get a good time. I arrived early (as usual!) and got registered. It was absolutely freezing and the clocks had just gone forwards so getting up at 5am old time was very hard. Having got myself warm I went to find the toilets before heading off to the starting line and bumped into somebody I hadn't seen for two years which was really nice. We had a chat and she had only just started running and this was her first 10K. We wished each other luck and I headed off to walk to the starting line.

There were no timing signs so I positioned myself relatively near to the front as I was hoping to finish in around 48 mins which would beat my previous pb by 1 min 20 secs. The sun came out just as the race was about to start and I was able to take off one of my thermal layers! We started and I set off quickly hoping to use other people as a guide to my pace. After running for about ten minutes I realised that I hadn't seen any km markers so had no idea as to how fast I was going so just carried on using my training pace plus a bit. I didn't actually see any km markers until 4km and by that time I had just thought sod it - keep going and see how I do. I did start to see more markers just as the course went uphill, but looking at my watch I realised that I was on for a good time if I could just keep going.

The last km seemed to go on FOREVER but finally I saw the finish line. My watch said 47 mins 8 secs which was another 2 mins 12 secs off my previous PB. WOW!

On the Runner's World website people were saying they were going by their garmin time. I had always thought garmins were like tomtoms, but when I looked them up there are other kinds. So after some research and serious blagging I manged to get a forerunner 305 quite cheap. What an amazing bit of equipment. Even though my legs were tired I managed a 9 mile run with my virtual training partner on Wednesday. I even managed to keep up with him for most of the way. Looking at the stats when I got back I realised that the stretch of road I always struggled on and thought it was just because it was open and always windy was in fact a long hill. Well that explains that then.

I have been making good use of my new favourite toy this week. I did a long run on Wednesday in a really good time thanks to keeping a close eye on my pace. I have done an 8 x 400m speed session where I noticed how quickly my heart rate returned to normal which was good. The 10 x hill session this morning was a bit of a killer but hopefully when I repeat it I will be able to see an improvement over time. I have to tackle these hills if I am going to manage the Stonegate Road hill killer in September.

My predicted time for half marathon was 1:48:47 after the Abbey Dash. This means running at 8 min 19 secs per mile (5 min 9 sec per km). I hope that I can beat that time and will be starting to include tempo sessions into my training once a week.

So my training sessions for this week will hopefully be: 5 miles including 3 miles tempo at about 8:15 I think. 10 mile long run. Speed session. Hill session (argh!).