What's this about getting enough sleep?

We're going to have to be up at 5:45 tomorrow morning for Striders, so I should have been in bed long ago. However, I didn't get home from work till about 10pm, so there's not much chance of that :-(

Run club last night was the infamous 3k time trial. I figured that I'd try a new race plan. Normally, I know when I'm near my limits, because my arms start hurting. I don't know why it is; it's been that way all my life. It doesn't matter whether my arms are still or moving, up or down, or whatever. When I go too hard, they hurt. Back off a bit and they stop hurting. That's always been my limiting factor. Anyhow, tonight I decided to run into the hurting zone, and then keep runing instead of backing off. After all, it's only 13 minutes of pain, and my physio manages to inflict 45 miniutes of pain without any difficulty (see - proof that going to the physio does help your running :-)

Well, if I started too fast, then so did every one else. It seemed that every one I talked to dropped 20 seconds betwen their first and second k's. In my case, I guess I was focussing on the upcoming pain rather than on running a controlled race - that's my excuse anyhow. The good news was that I managed a 15 second PB (yeah!), the bad news was that when I ignored the pain in my arms, I found that my legs just didn't want to respond. Were my legs giving up in sympathy with my arms, or because I went out too fast and had nothing left? I guess I'll find out when I run a much better race next time (you will, won't you Bruce!).

Out of interest, my splits were
3:55! (told you it was too fast),
4:13 (that's more like it), and
4:22 (so much for the big kick home)
for a total of 12:30.

I told MicroTA about "our" new PB (his PB was a second faster than mine, but he wasn't able to be there last night, so he's going to have to get down there next time), and his reaction was "couldn't you have just taken a second off it??" :-)

For the record, tiger angel also got a good PB, but I don't know exactly what it was, and she's been asleep now for ages so I'd better not wake her up to find out.

Off to bed now, and lets see how we do in the cold and on the hills tomorrow morning...

sfG

p.s. oh, and, suckers for punishment that we are, we're running boundary at microTA's footy match a few hours after striders. I think I'll be sleeping very soundly tomorrow afternoon :-)