The coffee run

I think I have inadvertently set my own Parkrun bar rather high - yesterday I knocked 30 seconds off last week's time and came in at 28:13. Utilising my new magic watch (it talks to my phone and uses witchcraft to know where you are), I had been aiming for 28:30, although said watch nearly went into the Boating Pond about 17 times, when I realised I hadn't turned off the audible low pace alert. 

I thought I would do today's long run on road, in truth because my knee is hurting and I think it might relate to wearing neutral trail shoes, but mainly because I really, really, really wanted an iced coffee. I knew, because my car tells me when I go there, that Shipley is about 7 miles away, which is handy, both because it has a Costa and because my training schedule said an 11.2 km run was required today. Buoyed on by my Parkrun times, I was also curious as to how fast I could run a road 10K and specifically whether I could achieve my imagined 'race pace' of running 10 km in an hour. 

I filled the water bladder in my little trail running bag, stuffed in some warm clothes, money and my 16 - 25 railcard (student perks), grabbed the magic watch and set off. Straight into a head wind. Almost immediately the pace alarm (now only on vibrate) went off, but it was difficult to move any faster when heading into the teeth of a gale on top of a hill. I carried on, hitting a small, but quite steep hill, at around 2.5 km, before continuing across the plateau and turning right onto a more major road. On this flatter and downhill ground, my pace was good but just before the 5 km mark, I reached a large hill and it reduced accordingly. Struggling up a more gradual, but still significant grind, the watch went into overdrive, but my 5 km time showed I was still on target. Starting the descent and seeing the size of the hill to the other side of the valley, I wimped out and decided I'd take the other, flat route to Shipley. Turning right onto the main road, the last 2.5 km felt hard, firstly I couldn't cross the road, the slope up to the Saltaire junction seemed tougher than it should do and when I reached 11 km, the best option seemed to be to grit my teeth and run faster, just to make the last 500 m go away sooner! Although I feel I cheated a little because this route involves far more descent than ascent, I ran my 11.51 km with an average pace of 5:49 mins/km so I hope that after a bit more training, I can also manage the same speed in a flat 10K race.

Having stretched incongruously by the side of the road, and stopped sweating quite so much, I wandered up to Costa and got myself that iced cappuccino. I think I had earned it!

Hard won cool beverage