While the slower runs have their value, sometimes it is just pure fun to pick up a little faster pace. Today was that day, as I tried to do an injury check / confidence boosting run - by incorporating tempo, paved & unpaved and a single steep climb.
My main goal was to do regular bodyscans while the body was under some stress. After 1 km in zone 2 as warmup I aimed to maintain a steady pace. As the graph below shows, my pace did suffer a little during the steep climb but picked up right after!
While the weather had completely shifted to well above 10 C, there was still some residuel ice occasionally. With my road shoes I decided not to take any chances and picking mud over ice a couple of times!
The run felt great as my hamstring felt smooth after the warmup, the pace was maintainable without having to dig too deep. Mentally this felt amazing, as during the many zone 1 or 2 runs I could just let my mind drift to other things, here I was fully in the moment and enjoying the run!
As my day started with 20 km of cycling before this run , I expect to do a 6 - 8 km recovery run tomorrow. Sofar on the first 3 days of the week I ran 50 KM (M = 12km, T = 15 km, W = 23km) which means this peakweek should provide a quality boost towards the Februari Marathon!
Happy Running!