Today was my first run after the 10k Women’s Mini Marathon on Monday. For the last 3 months my running has been all about increasing my distance and I have not been worried about my speed too much. I just wanted to be able to run 10k non-stop.
I am taking part in a local 10k on June 27th so have decided to focus a bit on building up my strength and see can I go just a bit faster. It’s quite a hilly route and I plan to run it once a week as my long slow run.
So today was my second ever tempo run. I have been a bit unclear on the difference between a tempo and threshold run so did some research and decided to aim for a pace 10 seconds faster than my last 5k run and an exertion level of 8 to 9.
Easier said than done. I have discovered I am really bad at maintaining a constant pace. I was all over the place. Took off too fast and after 12 minutes was up to exertion level 10 and had to walk for a few seconds.
From then on it became more of an interval session with a total of 5 short walk breaks. I did succeed in running the incline in the last km and was all set to go for broke over the last 500m when I was pulled up short. I run with my dog, Max, and as we rounded the bend, came face to face with a huge German Shepherd and his owner. Max stopped dead and, as we are connected at the belt, so did I. The next minute was spent trying to breathe, call the dog and keep running while he tried to bring me in the opposite direction. The other dog owner just laughed at me.
No pb then, lots of sweat despite the rain and a cross dog.
running not racing 