PB day

Today Katie went for her PB at park run and absolutely smashed it, her previous best in a park run was around 38 minutes and over 5k in general was just over 35 minutes. Katie set a time of around 32 minutes 30 seconds and was very happy with that. She should be happy with that, her aim was 35 minutes so this was a fantastic result. Well done Katie :-) 

I was also out today. I actually wasn't feeling that great, I had played 4 hours of badminton in the last 2 days so lucky this was a recovery week, I decided that I wasn't ready for a 10km time trial as my longest run has only been 8 miles so I went with my gut and decided to try and beat my 2.2 mile personal best. This may seem like an odd distance but at work we do a handicap run over this distance so it is another one I would like to improve on . 

In the handicap run everyone is set off to finish at the same time based on their predicted finishing time. We did the last one in early May I think, my first one in fact and I ran it in 16:58. I knew I was in better shape than that and passed through 2.2 miles in closer to 16 minutes in setting my recent 5k PB of 23:04. My aim today was to go from 15 minutes 30 seconds, so around 7:02 pace. Given that my 1 mile PB (was - hint it went ok) 7:04 I felt that this was a push target but something that I could achieve. 

I set out a bit pessimistic as my hamstrings were feeling the badminton, but due to waiting ages for a GPS signal my warm up was a good 10 minutes. Think I should always try for longer work-ups, certainly at weekends where time is less of an issue. The first mile went down in 6:47, my first sub 7 minutes mile, the second mile I think just shaded over 7 minutes but still inside my old PB and I ran the last 2 miles at 6:45 mile pace. Overall I finished in 15 minutes 13 seconds, a huge improvement over my last proper attempt at this and confirmation that my mostly slow training is not impacting my speed too much. 

I am aiming to get in some more speedier work, initially doing some running at more like race pace for 10km, hopefully with the endurance running I am doing this can then be extended to the half marathon.