Spring!

Spring has officially sprung in running world. Yesterday I ran around Regent’s Park after work for the first time this year.

The early blossom is out and hung like frozen confetti in the gloom as I passed the York Gate (this is not my photograph,  no sun for me yesterday). Daffodils bobbed their heads in my wake and Greylag Geese blocked the path, staring down their orange beaks at me in an unimpressed fashion.

It was a great run, I am very happy to say. “7 x 800m at 10k pace, recover for half the interval time”, which translated as “fast for 3m 20 secs, slow for 1m 40 secs”. I’m not sure this was mathematically accurate as far as the distance went, but more importantly it made the intervals fit into 5 minute sections, which helped my poor brain cope with knowing when to start and stop.

It’s quite worrying how difficult I find timing myself. I sometimes spend whole runs calculating and re-calculating my speed or pace; maths was never my strong suit. One day I will do what my dad once did and get to mile 12 in a half marathon and be astounded that there is another mile left to run, having missed some mile markers and mis-counted my running speed. All the way along I will think, “this is going so well! this is so easy!”.