All's well that ends well!

The weather was too good to resist today (see picture taken from my window earlier) and as a result, you'll hardly be surprised to discover I did my last session of the week today. What a good way to finish as well; 4 blocks of 10 minutes with a mere 2 minutes recovery in between at threshold. A toughie, but a session that I'm very much at home with as it doesn't require too much breakneck speed. After much ooing and aaring as to where the session should be done, I chose the triangular loop just behind my house, which I have used on numerous occasions before, albeit for much shorter intervals, as short as 1 lap of the triangle. (x12!)

Today was going to be a lot steadier than that, but still a pace which wasn't too slow. The pace had to be comfortable but out of my comfort zone to push the boundaries a little.

After a relativley restrained warm up, I was off and into my first 10 minutes which was run fairly steadily, but faster than I intended. The ground on the fields was rock hard and I wisely decided to wear the road shoes today to compensate for this. The first lap, which after measured on GMap Pedometer (Garminless today!) came out at 0.2131 miles was run in around 1.20, which I was very pleased with considering the times I was doing when doing these flat out were around 1.10 in Winter! Still, there was a long way to go and I was wary of setting off too fast and ruining the whole session, but I hung on in there well and got 7 and half way up the hill done in 10 minutes, so 1.5 miles almost exactly, and a 6:40/mile pace to boot.

The first 10 minutes set a precedence for the rest of the session really. I felt strong up the hills, good down and to be crusing on the flat. I possibly didn't get halfway up the hill on the other 3, but comfortable completed 7 laps and so the mile pace stayed well in the 6:40s. Top stuff and a brilliant day's running in the Sun! That brings the weeks training, after 7 total today, to a very pleasing 32.5 miles (my highest yet!). With the longer run being 9 miles or so, this would easily hit 35 so that's where I'm aiming for. A rest tomorrow is on the agenda which will also go down well with the old legs, although they felt a lot better after yesterday!