Following a good day of rest yesterday (cycle commute not withstanding), I took myself for an experimental 5k this morning as a sort of recovery, sort of 'how will this feel?' test. I felt slow, obviously my pace has been a bit unnatural of late due to training for pacing duties and though I wasn't trying to stick to that any longer, I certainly wasn't speedy. Also, my old mate the ITB niggle was waving from the sidelines and I didn't fancy any more enthusiastic contributions from that side of things!
| I was absolutely chuffed then, when following a slow pootle to work on two wheels, I realised I had next to no pain whatsoever and that the old leggies felt a lot lighter and less dull from slow running than they have done for a while. As this conveniently coincided with a rare free Tuesday evening, I took myself along to a track session with Salford Harriers at the Ethiad stadium. I'd planned to maybe plod round the track a bit anyway and really just thought I'd bob by to show my face but I felt OK so joined in with the track session. I'm never one of the fastest at track and am almost always trailing at the back but I was pretty chuffed to check my laps later and realise that I was kicking out around 6 minute mile pace, which is almost the fastest I've ever run anyway. So good to feel the wind under my tail again! |  It was a lot warmer than this cloudy photo makes it look! |
I'm not too sure of how advisable it is to do a speed interval session 48 hours after a marathon and I'm not quite convinced it's the sort of tapering one should be doing 5 days out of a 12 hour ultra either but heck, I enjoyed it and I don't feel I pushed myself beyond sense. As long as I take the remainder of the week fairly easy, I reckon it'll all be A-OK!
