WAMC City Beach 8k 2014

4th week, 4th race. I'm improving a little but it feels very slow progress.
To me this confirms my belief that I (and most people), benefit much more from high volume training, rather than the 60-70km weeks I've been doing. If the knee allows, I'll push up to 100km per week over the next month and see how much faster I can get.

Once again it was a pretty poorly paced run by me. Apart from just being bad by me, I think I'm accustomed to having a big endurance base and being able to finish strong, whereas recently I have nothing in the tank.

3:34/3:43/3:46/3:49/3:51 - so about 18:45 through 5k
I knew I'd blown it pacing wise, managed one more km in 3:49 before walking through the 6k drink station to allow 3 guys to catch me. I then tacked onto them to finish out the last 2k - 4:08/3:48

30:48 to finish - still pretty slow but improving (VDOTs for the 4 races - 52.26,52.87,52.86,53.58)

WAMC Founders 10 miler 2014

Third Sunday race in a row - a while since I've done that. On the back of another 60k run, Sat am bike ride week, this week with one tempo interval session on Tuesday

I lined up at the start and realised my Garmin was out of batteries - it had not been contacting well with the charger this week which sometimes causes this. So no idea of my pacing except at 5.1 and 10.6km when I passed the start/finish timer.

I tries to set out conservatively, and hit 5.1k bang on 20 minutes - about 25 sec ahead of my 4min/km goal. I started to struggle on the second lap, especially into the breeze and up the small inclines, such that they are around Perry Lakes. There was daylight ahead this whole section so not much to focus on.

10.6k in 22:30 - pretty much back to 4min/km but struggling. Luckily I was passed at this point and focussed on staying near him for as long as possible, getting me to the 13k drink station where I walked for 10sec to take a drink (it was warming up quickly). There was nobody close behind me, so I got back and focussed on maintaing some rhythm through to the finish.

I came through just over 1:05 for the 16.1km, losing 35sec or so in the last 5k with an overall average about 4:02min/km.

Happy enough with slow progress - even if this was slower than marathon pace 5 months ago.

Unfortunately my upset stomach has been an issue all week and the rest of the day was no exception - hoping it will improve in the next few weeks.

One more race in this sequence - 8k at City Beach next week before planning to lift the mileage thereafter.