But it hurts!

Following my uninspired run on Monday I was determined to get out there tonight and see what I could achieve.

I'm not sure I was at my absolute best as I had pain in my feet and calves most of the way around the run. In fact I noticed two thirds of the way in I was running with my toes curled up, I have no idea why.

I tried to pace myself and I am sure now that pacing is key, I am not 100% certain I have cadence down right just yet. I need to start running with someone to see how I compare with them.

Anyway I was determined and as you can see from the heat map above its consistently yellow with green highlights which is where the points were when I decided to push myself and pace myself.

Through the pain I was determined enough to carry on and ran the full long run and I felt great for doing so. I ache now but I'm happy with another great achievement.

I wasn't happy with the pace/time on Monday as I did so well on Friday. I don't honestly know what I did on Friday to get such results as I pushed hard tonight and managed an improvement on Monday but nothing like last Fridays run. The pain etc were obviously factors in tonight's performance over Friday but at least it was better than Monday.

I've put away my fears of the Nike+ apps accuracy though as I ran Nike+ and WalkJogRun together to test distance and pace. The results were as follows:

• Nike+ – Distance 4.63 Km / Pace 8'04″ p km
• WJR – Distance 4.53 Km / Pace 8'02″ p km

Ultimately not much in it.

I should stop beating myself up about my performance as well because I looked at the averages for men my age and men my age in the Nike+ Community and I am not doing so badly:

I think I should be proud that in 7 weeks I am running longer distances in total than average, have a nearly equal average pace and and almost equal average distance per run.

I've also put fears about conditions and circumstances behind me. Of course it's not the depths of winter but I did get absolutely soaked this evening. I couldn't see through my sunglasses (I wear an old pair of prescription light tint sunglasses when I run as I don't mind if I break them etc and they are a good fit). It was either the driving rain or the stinging of my sweat in my eyes hampering my vision throughtout this run but I plodded along.

All this in a week where I was given a can of gin and tonic at my desk 9 am Monday (no I didn't drink it) and had a lovely meal, some cocktails and beer in town with a good friend of mine last night.

Not bad at all 🙂

The plan now is to get through the final weeks of training, push for the solid 30 minute runs (the goal of the coaching sessions) then work on my pace and get some more 5Ks under my belt.

I hope then to have the nerve and confidence to join the Nike+ Running Club in Covent Garden and honour my suggestion to another friend about running a 10K race…