I fell asleep on the sofa last night around 8.45pm as if I’d been drugged, ignoring peppermint tea and chocolate muffins on the coffee table and only being roused to go to bed after eleven. I was quite surprised then that I awoke at 6.10am this morning, ten minutes after my alarm didn’t go off.
It was such a beautiful morning that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to run and since Avishai had said the magic words ‘interval training’ at the weekend, I decided to do a little speed work. This meant a trip to the local common, which was glorious.
I estimate that the circuit around the common is 900m and is roughly rectangular (if you’re drugged, that is) with sides 250m, 150m, 300m and 200m. The surface is also roughly and it’s a great place to twist an ankle if you’re not careful.
My intervals for the four sides were broadly:
- Run at a good pace keeping my knees up
- Jog to get my breath back
- Run at a fast pace
- Jog, stretching out my strides and kicking my legs up behind me.
I approached this in a sufficiently vigorous manner that I needed to stop, stretch and catch my breath between each circuit. AND, on the last circuit, to stop myself from being sick! You probably didn’t want to know that though.
With a 1.5km run to get to the common and a 2.1km return, I reckon I ran about 8.1km in total, just over 5 miles, in 53 minutes.
Next time one of you guys with a satellite-guided wrist-watch is over this way, maybe you would tell me how long the circuit really is!