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Saturday 15 August 2009

5k Sandwiches & Olympic Inspiration

We got the tough stuff out of the way early this morning with a 9 mile sandwich, the filling being a cruel 5k time trial around Leeds Hyde Park. Both M & I were pretty much dreading the session after the last 3 weeks of gruelling hard miles but this was the last yucky bit of the week and it had to be done. We were joined by an old club mate Justin P for the ride over who taunted us repeatedly with his new electric blue racers, hot from the postie, (a freebie Adidas product trial that M & I had yet to receive). He was looking pretty fierce (and youthful) whilst M & I felt our age and hobbled around the park for the warm up 3 miler.
A pretty windy setting for this early race start but what a great session nevertheless. I enjoyed a 15s improvement on my last attempt at this 2 weeks ago, again after a full-on training week & came through feeling strong with very little slippage across my splits. I'm now a good kind of tired and ready for my relaxed recce of the Yorkshireman from Haworth in the morning. We came home feeling glad for making the effort and were nicely suprised & excited to see clubmate Alistair Brownlee competing in a world cup triathlon race on the telly this afternoon. What an inspiration he is! He was on fire and came in to win gold, looking like a champion all the way. He managed an incredible 29.15 for the 10k and that's after the swim & the ride! It feels so exciting and motivating to have such amazing local athletes to look up to (I brushed against him once in the club XC tent!); their strength and passion for the sport is real fuel for us amateurs to work hard and try our very best with what we've got. We can only dream of such achievements, well done Alistair! World Champs on the telly next, yay! Must dash...

4 comments:

Mark h said...

Well run RB.
A course pb is good going in the wind.
It was really windy in my neck of the woods (East Leeds ) today.

What happened to M ?
Couldn't see his name on the results.

Runningbear said...

Hi MH, thanks for that - yes was pretty hard work in the wind. We've had a hard week of running and M was still feeling the worst of it in his legs today, he ran the first 2m and called it a day as it was all feeling a bit too much. He's feeling better now though. Gool luck in the 10m, let us know how you get on. RB

Hayfella said...

Hello RB. I used to reckon 2 weeks is about right for a holiday; 1 to unwind and 1 to benefit. Now I think about a month is good!! Well run too. As Alistair inspires you, so you do people like me. It's a case of what we'd like to be if only we had the drive and talent. Now, back to the World's. Come on Jess Ennis!!

kate said...

hope you didn't get indigestion ;)
what with your training updates, eddie izzard running daily marathons and the world champs, i'm having inspiration over load and can't get off the sofa ;)

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