A 6 Mile Stitch

But first, The Deep! Yesterday we went to the Deep with some of Mike's family, it's a pretty cool ocean life museam kind of like a small seaworld but all inside.

The Architecture
(those horrible looking clouds did indeed soak us on the way out)

An ugly fish... I'm not sure what sort!

Luminous jelly fish

Sharks

Nemo! They were so cute!

Now, on to the running!

6 mile tempo
1 mile easy, 4 miles mid tempo (8.38), 1 mile slow

My Plan
1 mile @ just under 10 minute pace
8.48
8.42
8.34
8.28
1 mile @ just under 10 minute pace

What I did
6 miles in 53.31 average pace 8.55
Mile 1 - 10.00
Mile 2 - 8.48
Mile 3 - 8.24
Mile 4 - 8.37
Mile 5 - 8.37
Mile 6 - 9.02

Why I didn't stick to the plan...
It's all well and good having plans, and I love making plans! But in running and training sometimes your body just wants something else! In the first mile I got a stitch almost straight away, this is really wierd, I never get stitches. I putt it down to the fact I'm running after a day out where I didn't plan my food or drink well. I know I was dehydrated before I left the door but it was too late to remedy, I also felt pretty full but I didn't want to put the run off any longer as we hadn't seen Roxie much all day and we wanted to spend the evening with her.

I took mile 1 slightly slower and paused at one point to try and get rid of the stitch, it soon became evident that the stitch was there to stay! I felt really defeated in mile 2 thinking I'm never going to hit pace with this stitch.. grump, grump, grump... However, just before mile 3 it dawned on me, the stitch was there to stay no matter what pace, and the faster I went the faster I'd get home and could stop running! Subsequently mile 3 felt strong and although I'd intended to go for negative splits I decided to just go with it! I pulled back a little for miles 4 and 5 aiming for pace of 8.38 and hit just under. Overall I got slightly faster than the mid-tempo pace. That just shows what the mind can do, if I'd stayed being all defeatist I'm pretty sure I would not have hit my time. My cool down mile was a bit fast too... I just wanted to be home!

Running is such a mental game sometimes, that's one of the reasons I love it!

Hope everyone's had a good week, mine's been pretty productive! I've bagged myself two job interviews and some more voluntary work. The job interviews are for working at care homes and the voluntary work will be on an acute psychiatric ward. All will be great experience for my application for mental health nursing. I will get on that course! I got feedback from my interview, apparently only 2 people from my group got on!! You had to get full marks on the interview and I was a few short, it was really competetive just to get an interview as they had a 300% increase in applicants... The lady I spoke to said I probably would have got on last year so that was kind fo comforting, at least it wasn't me, it was just that some were better. I also feel better for next year knowing they do think I'm capable. It just means a bit of waiting, but so long as it all comes together eventually what's a year?