The grand piano drops ...

I couldn't decide what sort of run to do this morning, so just went out for a firm 14km along the river. From the start, I didn't feel great - the bounce in my step was more like a thud and whenever I leaned forward to accelerate, my legs had a serious delay before responding! I've had this sort of day many times before, when lack of rest and multiple consecutive days of training catch up with me. Combined with consistent 11 hour workdays, the body can only cope with so much. I find the best way to deal with it is either to roll over and stay in bed, or to do the session as best I can, but not kick myself too hard if I don't meet the time/pace/distance/weight I wanted to do.

Given how I felt, I decided to just try to stick to a consistent pace of around 3:55min/km, which I normally should be able to do without too much trouble. After a bit of a warmup, I got to the pace and was pretty happy keeping it there on the way out. I turned at 7km, which was fortunately located at the middle, rather than the top, of a little hill (my legs didn't really want to think about hills this morning).

I kept the pace up, past other runners, cyclists, jogging groups and rowers next to me on the river. Every time I looked at my watch, the pace was 3:55 or 3:56 - I was happy. Then at 12km, just at the start of the Botanic Gardens, the wheels fell off. In the space of about 5 seconds, my legs went to lead, I got a stitch and my breathing became laboured, my running form was all over the place, and I was struggling to run in a straight line, let alone keep pace! The fabled grand piano had dropped in a big way.

The rational thoughts going through my mind were - "don't worry, you were feeling crap anyway" and "use this opportunity to push through, like you would want to in a race". I pushed on, at a much slower pace, for the next 1km, before stopping at my "start/stop point" and jogging very slowly home. On the plus side, breakfast tasted amazing and at least I know that my shite session for the week is out of the way (fingers crossed)!

Total of 14k  in 56:46 with an average pace of 4:05 (includes warmup/warmdown and the grand piano section), average heart rate of 169bpm and peak of 186bpm.