PB

For once I'm not talking about Peanut Butter - but I'll get to that later.

Monday's run was 30 mins with last 10 minutes at threshold/HM pace.  Now I don't have GPS and even if I did I put my iPod in my back pocket so I wouldn't be able to look at it to know how fast I was going so when its time to do HM pace I just make sure I speed up and try and stay at that pace.

Time: 32:32
Distance: 5.7km

Yesterday the training plan called for a 45 minute run with the first and last 15 mins at east pace and the middle 15 at threshold/HM pace.  I mapped a 5 mile route at lunch going a way that I hadn't been before for a bit of variety - good idea I thought... WRONG.  The 30 seconds or so was downhill which meant I spent the next few minutes climbing, a little drop down then onto the  flat, which was great until I came to another climb to get into town, worse still that was when the first 15 minutes was up and it was time to pick up the pace.

It was raining which I've realised I don't really mind too much when I'm running it keeps you cool and people can't really tell what's rain and what's sweat so that's a bonus!  Also as it was raining there were less people around town which made life a bit easier, less people to dodge and no-one shouted anything out so I'd say that's good news.  I'm not sure if it was because of the rain or sweat or because I just hadn't put it on properly but all of my zinc oxide tape on my legs came off really quickly so I was a bit worried about my calves and shins/

I ran out of town and towards home and started to realise I'd get home sooner than I thought so I went off the main road and up and down some of the side streets to make up distance and finally my iPod told me I'd done 30 minutes and I could slow down.  Some tightness in my calves but other than that everything was fine.  I just kept thinking of that saying " its not your legs giving out its your mind giving up" and that seemed to help.

I did get to home much sooner than I thought so I ran down to the end of the road and back up the big hill and then back round and then I walked up the alleyway to home to stretch out my legs.

Time: 47:47
Distance: 8.7km

I'm pretty pleased with that but when I logged into my Nike + account last night I had a few pop ups which were a nice surprise:

A run full of PBs.  I really love the Nike app when you see things like that it makes it seem like I am getting better at this running lark and I'm feeling pretty positive for this weekends longer run now.