I was working from home again today so, as usual, I got Duncan to drop me off on his way to work so I could get a decent run in nice and early.
It was a beautiful morning, the sun was shining and the birds were singing. Duncan dropped me off on Rivington Road at the entrance to 'Old Rachel's' again, which is one of my favourite runs. As last Friday, I ran along to Higher Hempshaws and continued towards Lead Mines Clough.
I had set my Garmin for an interval session of 5 x 1/2 miles which I intended to do at around a 7.45 pace, with 1/4 mile recovery in between, starting with a one mile warm up.
My one mile warm up ended and I started my first half mile of effort and... oh no, cows!!!! Right, I'm getting sick of this now. It's now three days on a run that I've been confronted by a field of cows where there aren't usually cows. This time I was on my own though so I decided to brave it. As I approached, a few heads turned to watch me. More and more turned round and it was quite intimidating. I had all sorts going on in my head like 'don't make eye contact' as if that would help. Luckily, they weren't at all interested in me and just carried on munching the grass but they really helped me with my first effort as I had felt quite tired to start with but I just wanted to get past them as fast as my little legs would carry me. Thanks cows!
I got to the gate and my first effort was over and I started on my quarter mile recovery. Why is it the quarter mile recovery goes so fast? It seems like only seconds before I'm giving it beans again. The next half mile, which dropped me into Lead Mines Clough, was pretty downhill which was nice and I felt really good and strong. At this point I was regretting having put a long sleeved top on though and was contemplating whether stripping down to my sports bra/crop top would constitute indecent exposure. I decided it would and so kept my top on.
The third effort was quite hard as I was starting to get tired at this point, probably because I hadn't eaten enough before I come out and I don't run well without having a lot of food. The fact that I had a few glasses of wine last night might also go towards explaining why I was a bit lethargic this morning.
Effort four was better than effort three and took me out to the Bowling Club, where I actually had to stop for a few seconds to catch my breath before starting my recovery.
During this recovery, I passed Chris F and his dog running through Rivington towards the prep school. He looked far fresher than me and he'd probably been running twice as fast.
I got to between Go Ape and the reservoir and my watch beeped for effort five. Finally, the last one! I was really tired now and my calves were getting pretty tight. This was my worst effort of the lot, by quite a long way. I was so happy when my watch beeped again signalling the end of the last effort. Thank goodness, I'm sure that last one was a mile not half a mile.
My pace for the five efforts was:
1 - 7.14
2 - 7.16
3 - 7.50
4 - 7.36
5 - 8.32
Efforts 1 and 2 were much faster than the pace I had aimed for (7.45) and effort 4 was a bit faster too. Effort 3 was ever so slightly slower and effort 5 was a lot slower.
Again, it is a bit of a cheat as the majority of this run is downhill but the Strava graph makes it look much more downhill than it actually is as it's only very gradual and in some places, barely noticeable, for example, on my first half mile effort I could have sworn there was more uphill than down, but then I suppose I was too busy concentrating on the cows.
Total distance - 5.75 miles
http://www.strava.com/activities/150226387/laps
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