Moving target

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12 km 

1:00:16 / 5:01 pace

23C, bright and sunny, slightly windy - late afternoon. Perfect. 

This was what I wanted. I lovely cool afternoon after light showers throughout the day and a 12 km beach run at 5.01 pace. You can click on the link above to relive it, as if hovering above the beach. If you have not seen my runs in this format before, you might be confused by the dashes inland that I make along the way. These are the canals and sometimes I run them to add to the distance and sometimes I run them because the tide is in and I have no other way to cross them. Today it was for both of these reasons. 

 I could have run faster, but the point is that as I set out my target was 5.13 pace, so the final result was considerably quicker than planned. This is because I just felt sharp and although my heel hurt, it wasn't unbearable. Well, of course it wasn't. I ran, didn't I?

 It struck me on this run that I need to get away from my recent long-run obsession and focus more on pace. This is what I will now do - except on Sundays, when I will aim mainly to go longer at the expense of pace. 

 If it all sounds like I make this up as I go along, that's exactly what it is. When I get within 20 weeks of the marathon I will follow a plan drawn up by someone who really knows what they are doing. For now, I have the freedom to do as I see fit and that's all part of the fun.  





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