Whether the weather be hot

The BUPA 10k is this Sunday. My training is going well and my ankle is holding up well. The only unknown is the weather.

It has become noticeably warmer in the last week. The five day forecast says that it will be 21C on Sunday. If it is then I can probably kiss goodbye to a sub-45 minute finish and I will reset my expectations to sub-50 minutes instead. That's no bad thing as I may not be ready to run at pace for 45 minutes yet and doing so could agitate my ankle. Better to run and enjoy the race than push myself too hard and kill any chance of running a marathon this year.

Once the 10k is done I will have one week until my 18 week marathon training schedule begins. Fingers crossed I get through Sunday unscathed.

10k Here we come!

I only managed to get one run in when I went to Chester for the Easter weekend. But while I was there I was offered a place in the BUPA London 10k at the end of May.

My wife's cousins are coming to London to run the 10k and they had a spare place. I figured a 10k would be perfect to see how my fitness is coming along. It would give me three weeks after the end of my recovery training to tune up. And then I'll be a week or two off starting marathon training.

Several of the "team" haven't run a 10k before so it should be a fun event. And I haven't run an official 10k race since Gunnersbury Park 10k in August 2012. I'll have three goals: a) under 45 minutes, b) under 50 minutes and c) under an hour. c) would pretty much be a disaster and an indication that something terrible has gone wrong. a) would be brilliant but is a tough ask. I ran 20 minutes at a sub-45 minute 10k pace last week and it felt very hard going but with the adrenaline of the occasion and a bit of friendly competition I may just be able to pull it off.

The three week 10k training started this week and involves a lot of threshold and interval running. I think the longest run is about 70 minutes so nothing too taxing hopefully. I'll update hopefully next week with more of how the training is going.