Or, 4 weeks and counting
Quick update on the Great Scottish Run yesterday. It's always a good plan to have a half marathon about 4 or 5 weeks before a full to get some race training in and look at pacing. Especially with the injury situation and the lack of a fixed target time, I'm still a little unsure about what my pace should be, so I needed to experiment and see how I felt. As with the Alloa half before London, the plan was simple - run at a set pace for the first 10 miles, then push harder for the last 3 - as close to 7 minute miles as I could. Out of nowhere, I plucked 8:20 miles as my target for the day.
It was an odd day - overcast and a little breezy before the start, but sneaky warm. A slightly new route this year, heading out of George Square up the north face of St. Vincent Street, before looping back round and attacking the Kingston Bridge from the west approach. After that, the usual trudge out to Bellahouston (passing several barely remembered sub-crawl hostelries), on to Pollok Park before heading back to Glasgow Green.
Was going about 8:10 for the first couple of miles, and feeling reasonable, but forced myself to ease back as I know that's not a realistic Le Mans pace. Gradually dropped it back to 8:20 and sat at that pace until mile 10. Started to push at that point, but found there wasn't really that much left in the tank - after a 7:12 mile 11, mile 12 was into a morale sapping headwind and significantly slower. Mile 13 about the same, and came home in just over 1:47 - a full 13 minutes behind last year's PB.
The lesson, then, was that 8:20 is a little fast if there wasn't much left in the tank - even though the conditions weren't ideal. So, I now have a target pace and therefore time for Le Mans - 8:30 miles which would be around 3:45 for the full race. That was all I needed out of yesterday's run, so job done!
