Get out of bed!

For some reason I found it very hard to get out of bed this morning. Dave texted just before 6am to say he was feeling unwell and wouldn't be training. It was cold, I was comfy in bed, but there was a little voice telling me "get out of bed!!!". So I did, and I'm very happy for it.

I decided to go for a straight run - out for 25mins and back (I was a bit late out of bed so only had time for 50mins). I took the usual route along the river, through Southbank, past the rowing club and back. The GPS was taking ages to acquire satellites and was messing up a bit. It only acquired about a kilometre into the run, but said that I did 11.1km. I subsequently checked the distance on MapMyRun and it said 13.1km. So, something is up with the GPS! The run took 51:12, implying a pace of either 4:15min/km or 3:55min/km whichever distance source you believe. It certainly felt faster than 4:15, so I'm inclined to go with MapMyRun (but then I would say that, wouldn't I?). The MapMyRun link showing the route is here:
http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/47492296

I know I said I aimed to go out for 25mins and back. I ended up going out for 25:30, so I obviously missed getting back by 12 seconds. Not ideal when you'd like to train to negative split. So what happened? Well, I made a schoolboy error at the start. Right at the beginning of the run, when I was meant to be jogging for a warm-up, some girl runs past me like she's racing an 800m. I figured I'd catch her up when I started running, but I accelerated a little anyway. She must have slowed down or something, because I overtook her after right away, which obviously annoyed her because she started sprinting again to get ahead of me. I thought it was hilarious that she was racing, but felt I couldn't let the challenge go unanswered. So, I started going hard a LOT earlier than I should have. Stupid stupid stupid. A proper athlete would never have done that. It meant I was throwing out 3:30s in the first few kilometres! I know it's not the "Kenyan" way either (see this great article), and I'm sure that if I had started slow and allowed more build-up, I would have had a much better overall run.

Oh well, not to worry, I still had a great morning and wasn't unhappy with the session. My legs are still stiff, possibly from the snatches on Sunday or squats yesterday, but they still felt strong at the end.