Speedy 1:18 by Speedy_245

This weekend saw me fly to Pakistan for 3 weeks, so its back to dreadmill training. Yesterday I managed 5k in 24 mins at 6:30am but because of the time difference it still felt like it was 1:30am,a time I have never trained at! Friday was the Serpentine 5k and I really surprised myself by coming second! I went out easy with a group of about 8 people and hit 1k in 3:20 (16:40) pace, slowly the pack dwindled to 4 of us (4-7th positions) by 3k (10:00). I was still feeling good and the pace seemed ‘slow’. During the 3rd K I moved out of the group to 4th place with 2 people not far behind me (one of them being Simon Stevens who I train with occasionally and ran 16:34 last month). At the 4th K (13:20) second and third were still about 15m in front and Simon and this other guy overtook me. I thought if I can stay with Simon for a couple of minutes then I should beat 16:40, which I was aiming for. Going down the hill the pace was picking up slightly and at the turn with about 400mto go the other guy cut up Simon and I overtook him. It is then a small uphill where I kicked away from the other guy to4th place. Round the last turn the two people in front were only 5yards away so I just sprinted for the last 250m and past them quite quickly. In the last 20m someone nearly caught me though. Finishing time 16:30,my fastest this year. No running on Thursday. Wednesday at work we had a bleep test. I have never done one of these before so didn’t know what to expect. For the people who have never done this before you run 20m turn around and come back. You have to make it to the end before the bleep. If you don’t you end there. Gradually the time between bleeps is shorter and thus you have to run faster to keep going. Generally this is a hard session. Anyway I managed to get to 14.10 and not surprisingly was the last one to stop. As the instructors were doing 2 tests I asked to do the other one as well (sucker for punishment me). This time I managed level 13.6 and could have gone further. I found this quite difficult for two reasons, one I find it hard to accelerate and decelerate within 20m and secondly the turns are hard, my groin hurt on Thursday. Tuesday was 9x2mins with Orlando. I didn’t have my watch so I don’t know how far I went but I am quite sure it was the furthest I have been this year. Monday was 5x3 mins around the Serpentine course aiming at a 3:15k pace, the same session as last Friday. This time because of the rest over the weekend I felt a lot ‘fresher’ and ran 200m further over the 5 reps.