I was aiming for 45 minutes, but achieved 45 minutes 3 seconds - my 10km tempo run

I am currently in London, staying at my sister's house in Streatham.  As you would imagine I would do, I brought my running kit with me so that I could take advantage of my time and not miss out on any training.  At first my plan was to go for a 21km steady run, but I woke up pretty late.  Rather than go for a 21km run and then most of the day would be gone, I chose instead to go for a 10km tempo run.  I wasn't too sure about this plan, as I only just did a 30km on Monday, so I figured my legs may still be pretty jaded.  All the same I decided to stick with it.

Now the other day I did a time close to 46 minutes for my 10km run.  I wanted to try to knock that down a bit to 45 minutes.  After a warm up jog I went down the road to Tooting Bec Common and prepared my mind for a 45 minute 10km attempt.  It is a nice park and there are plenty of off road opportunities to avoid some hard impact on the legs.  It has rained recently though, so the paths are a bit muddy.  For this reason I stuck mostly to the asphalt but switched now and again onto the muddy paths just to shake things and keep my mind fresh.

I set off fast and I was a little worried I was going to blow up long before the end.  I eased off the gas ever so slightly and after a few minutes, my breathing and heat rate settled down and I got a nice smooth rhythm going.  One lap of the common turned out rather conveniently to be 2.5km, so that allowed me to get a feel of where I was and how well I was doing at each stage of the run.  By half way my time was almost bang on 22 and a half minutes so I knew that 45 minutes was achievable, although it would be tough because I had been working hard in the first half.  By the end of the third lap 45 minutes was still within the realms of possibility so I pushed hard into the final lap.

I was breathing really hard the whole last lap and my legs were burning.  I didn't want to push too hard until the very last few hundred metres as I really didn't have that much left in the tanks.  When the final few hundred metres came I looked at my watch and saw it was going to be very close.  I gave the last spurt I could and kept looking at my watch.  With 50 metres left I realised I had mistimed it ever so slightly and that I was going to be a few seconds over my target.  The final time was 45 minutes and 3 seconds and I am pretty happy with that.  I may even be able to go under 45 minutes as early as next week just by better pacing.

I will be staying at my friend Pete's house in Bracknell tonight, so if I am lucky I will get a nice run in Bracknell forest tomorrow.  I love the scenery around Zurich but it is always nice to have a change from time to time, and in Bracknell forest I have no need to run on the asphalt at all, with acres and acres of woodland to run around in. I have biked there plenty of times, but I don't recall every running there before, so it will be fun I am sure.  Then at the weekend I will be at my parents' house in Wales, so I will get a chance to run in the woods of the Wye Valley.  Anny has also signed up for a 10km run and so is running regularly too, and she is coming to join me in Wales at the weekend, so I will see if I can drag her along with me.

Speak to you again soon
Paul Gump