Allendale Rd + 1 Mile Nation

This weekend turned out to be rather grueling. Yesterday we had the Allendale Rd race. Basically the winner is the person who goes the furthest before taking a walk break. If you take a walk break, you have to yell out Soft Arse so everyone can hear who the soft arses are. Unfortunately 1 guy thought it was on Sunday and a couple of others were no shows, so it was just me and Tony. To give you an idea, here is the elevation profile:



It was really tough. Tony is naturally much faster than I, and he was obviously slowing so he wasn't too far ahead, and I was going much faster than usual trying to keep up. He jogged in circles at the top of the hills while I caught up and I am please to say we both won, we are not soft arses, we ran the whole way. I didn't wear my HR monitor but I didn't need it to tell me my HR was at the max most of the way. Some of the down hills were so steep I am not sure if it was harder to go up or down. After all that my legs were so trashed, they have not felt like this in a long time. It is a beautiful scenic run and hopefully we can get some more people together and do it again.

Then this weekend is the 1 Mile Nation virtual race. Yesterday my legs were in no shape to be doing anything else so that left today to head down to the track. My legs were (make that are) still sore so I knew it would be tough to crank out any speed.

As usual at the local track, lanes 1 + 2 were blocked off so that meant lane 3 was the shortest lane I could run in. I did a warm up walk, some high knees, butt kicks and slow jog before a couple of 400m to test my pace, then I went for it. Laps 1 and 2 were ok but on lap 3 my quads felt like blubber and I struggled on til lap 4 when I managed to push on to the finish. I did 1 mile in 7:33.

Although I am more interested in long distances, I think 1 mile is a good distance to test leg speed and heart rate. Leg speed particularly is something that I have been working on over the past 6 months and I can already see great improvement. It helps pick up your long distance speed, and running at that pace improves your form, which of course you can carry over to any distance. When I run at that pace and feel myself tiring, I just make minor corrections to my form and suddenly my pace picks up again. It's great. It just feels so natural.

I was considering wearing my waffles but my feet would have been uncomfortable. I wore the Five Fingers and had NO ACHILLIES pain AT ALL...not until after, that is, which is to be expected.

My quads are still trashed from Allendale Rd and that 1 mile did not do anything to ease out the sore muscles. I just took my grandma's dog for a brisk walk and did a weights workout and a good stretch session, but it has not made a difference. A recovery run is needed tomorrow for sure.