7/1/16 – I’ll Never Fall in Love Again

What’s that verse in the song again? Something about falling in love, catching enough germs to get Pneumonia and when you do, they never phone ya… wise words, let me tell you.

Actually though, for all my ‘typical bloke’ whinging, I think I (and therefore Sue) may have dodged this particular bullet. I don’t want to jinx it, but although I’m not 100% – especially in the mornings – the sore throat, joint aches and the threat of head cold all seem to have receded. Yesterday I was able to complete a 1k swim in the new gym and today a 40 min ‘tempo’ run, without too much difficulty.

What’s a ‘tempo’ run I hear you cry? I’m buggered if I know. I do know what Timpo is – its the brand of those little plastic cowboys I used to play with when I was a kid (wish I still had some now, the prices these things go for ebay is incredible).

I get running ‘easy’: it means don’t go all out for PB – but tempo, hmmm? Sue tells me its a normal run with 5 mins slow jogging at the start and end and gradually increasing your speed during the middle part. My question is why bother? I prefer to run as well as I feel able to do at the time, but it seems I’m now feeling guilty about not sticking to the plan.

It’s all about my elusive old friend ‘stamina’, apparently, but I don’t get this cadence and gearing thing that the books tell you about. I have two gears: slow and stop (oh, and occasionally reverse when angry dogs come out to play).

My running speed (or lack thereof) seems to be solely dictated by the steepness of the gradient I am running up, although sadly the same isn’t always true when running downhill. Putting on a short burst at the end of parkrun is one thing, but being able to attack an incline by moving through the gears or allowing yourself to almost fall forward as you tackle a descent, are quite another. Its a  skillset that continues to elude me.

I’m told the LM course is generally quite flat, so why should I even bother too much with my lowly pace on gradients, or indeed training on them at all? I guess its simply that running has taught me one thing, nowhere is completely flat and there’s nothing like tired legs to accentuate even the most modest of elevations. The sooner I learn to deal with them the better, nearly three years in, though I feel I’m no closer,

This is all a roundabout way of telling you that, despite not feeling my best, I attempted the tougher ersatz parkrun route around home (including a small bit of lamp-post work chucked in for good measure). I ‘officially’ PB’d the course too in 32:04 (although it wasn’t as good as the run with the dog problem would have been). I finished with a light jog to make up my 40 mins, although when I checked my ‘warm-down’ pace afterwards it was still quicker than what I managed on either lap of the hill.

Looks like effective pacing will continue to remain a puzzle to me.