The big'un!

Having had a hard weekend's running and a big race coming up on Saturday, I decided to put in a really solid day's training today. I had been building up to it it since Sunday and after 'ooing and arring' as to what I should actually do, I decided on intervals to be run faster than race pace at 2 minutes each with 1 minute recovery jog. Feeling very energetic this morning, I went with my original idea of 14 efforts therefore leaving me with 42 minutes of hard training. To top things up to an hour, I had an 8 minute warm up and 10 minute warm down.
The sheer thought of having to do another 13 efforts after the first one is a big challenge to overcome. The session went very well and progressed nicely. The garmin decided to play up a little and so had my average pace varying from 5.55 to 6.34 between efforts, but I would say the day's total distance was around 7.5 miles (despite Garmin making it 7). I felt particularly strong on the last couple where I really felt to push on through the pain barrier giving me the maximum effects from a bloody hard session!
The terrain was off road varying from muddy fields to woodland tracks and contained a few short but stiff climbs. As a consequence of some uneven stuff, I managed to go over on my ankle a couple of times which is now very swollen. I hope this will be alright for Saturday.
What's going down on Saturday? It's the next round of the English Schools qualifying. I will be running for Harrogate and Craven after finishing 6th in the area championships at the end of November. Top 6 will get me into North Yorkshire for the English National Schools in Manchester. Failing that, I will have to settle for top 15 where I would qualify for North Yorkshire to run in Durham against a couple of other areas. Top 6 will be a tall order given that I'm competing against the year above but Hey! anything is possible.