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?

5 Mile Mishap

So I set out for my 5 mile tempo run before lunch, I was supposed to be running at mid tempo pace for all 5 miles which for me is 8.43... I did not feel confident I could do it so I decided to start slow and build up the pace hoping to finish faster than an 8.43 pace and therefore balance my pace out. Mike's garmin is usually set to lap every mile so in my head I had the rough paces planned out per mile and I knew I could calculate if I was on target as I went along the run.

I started off at a 9.15ish pace and was hoping to be at about 8.50 for mile 2, I then sped up to an 8.30 pace coming up to mile 3. I was wondering why is this so hard. My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest, it was going at 189bpm and it was so hard to run at an 8.30 pace, I didn't understand it. I felt really dizzy so I hit pause cause it just wasn't going right. I got fed up and reset the garmin because I though eff this I'm just going home I felt so awful. I started looking up the run on the garmin to see if I could figure out what was going on and then I realised. Mike had turned the lap setting off on his interval run. I was running a 6.55 pace at my fastest. No wonder I felt awful, I've never run a 6.55 pace before!! And it was telling me I was running an 8.32 pace while the data on the garmin training centre shows that at the time I thought I was doing an 8.32 I was actually in the low 7m/m pace for quite a long time. My pace was all skewed because it was accounting for my slow warm up mile.

After realising this was why the run wasn't going to plan I felt a bit better. I sucked it up and decided to finish the 5 miles. I don't like quitting without a good reason... once I'd gotten over my, why isn't this working out strop anyway!

So I still don't know if I could have run the correct pace because I had a rest in the middle while I tried to figure out why I felt like I was going to pass out!! Honestly, when technology goes wrong it really throws you hah!
Here's my stats - no splits for obvious reasons haha

Part 1
2.83 miles in 24.08 average pace 8.32, average HR 176, max 189

Part 2
2.22 miles in 18.57 average pace 8.32, average HR 183, max 188

Total
5.05 miles in 43.05
Would have been a PR if I hadn't had to stop in the middle to figure out what was going on.. but it took me a while so I certainly got my HR down which allowed me to carry on.

By the way, I added an about me section and a blog roll today. Please let me know if I've missed you off the blog roll or if you would like to be added :-)