HuRTs this week

HuRTs felt good this week. A couple of tough sessions, but I’m feeling that it’s good to be back after the break (this is my first week back in the office).

Tuesday was 4 x 10mins which is never easy, but one of my favourite sessions because I feel the longer reps are much better for my speed endurance on the longer races (which is about all I’m doing at the moment). The path at the bottom of the farm cove stairs was closed because of St George cinema, so we ran from the stone gates in a loop around art gallery road and back. A nice course actually, a lot less to worry about, not having crowds of people to dodge. But it was hot. Damn hot. And humid.

I felt strong on the first one and stuck with Mike Conway, but he’s coming back into form and just getting too fast for me now. I couldn’t stick the pace on the second rep, but was still feeling good, like I was running fairly easy despite the pace. By the third rep the heat was really starting to get to me and it suddenly became hard work. I finished about 30 metres shorter than on rep one and felt like I was melting on the 2 min recovery. I tried to stick with the guys around me on the final lap – Mike, Marc and Pete – but they went by me after about 500m and once they’d got far enough ahead for the invisible cord to snap, it was all over. My body had absolutely had it and refused to pick up the pace, try as I might. I jogged round as fast as I could, but I was blown up and ended well before the gates, only just past the end of the Art Gallery. Although with a 300km day on Saturday I wasn’t beating myself up over it!

Wednesday did a nice 19km through Centennial with Mike, Charlie, Luke, Andy and John, talking a bit of ironman.

Today it was Hickson road which I was perversely looking forward to. The session went well too, I wasn’t posting times as good as last time, but with heavy legs I was happy to be able to step it up and complete most of the reps in a reasonable time and feeling good in my body too. The times are a bit non-indicative because there was a bit of a headwind on the first one, a tailwind on the way back, then it seemed to die down and pick up sporadically.
1 – 4:08 - 148
2 – 3:57 - 154
3 – 4:04 - 159
4 – 4:02 - 158
5 – 4:08 - 163