ZA-TO-PEK!

am: Easy 30 on road, grass and trails from the Cricket Ground in Headingley
pm: 5 x (600, 200) 200 jog (80 secs) – 1.43, 1.42, 1.41, 1.41, 1.41, 30, 30, 30, 29, 29 at South Leeds
12.5mi

This morning I felt quite fresh walking to the train station and I was thinking about how I know I’m going to do a good session this evening; I sometimes get this feeling, I don't know why, but it is just when my body doesn't feel especially tired. Unfortunately, this feeling lasted little more than half an hour. I felt a bit sluggish and tired across the morning but once I got running I felt good. No niggles really, a pretty standard half hour on the grass & trails at Beckett Park. I ran from Headingley Stadium to Queenswood Drive and ran around the perimeter of the trails at Carnegie for a lap. It was great weather to run in but I soon found out the plague of green-flies is not isolated to Woodlesford. I got back, had a shower at the indoor cricket centre, ate some lunch and got back to my desk. It took 30 mins or so for me to feel like I was back to square one. I am just physically drained. My 'boss' is away these next 2 days so I am not obliged to come in. I definitely am not tomorrow as I feel like I need a day to catch up on some sleep and try and freshen myself up as apart from the first morning back, I've been getting up early every morning. There is a possibility that a bit of hay-fever could be a contributory factor but I consider that unlikely. I went home at 4pm so I could chill a bit before training and try and recharge the batteries a bit. When Phil and I arrived at South Leeds it was uninspiring to see we only had 5 guys turning up for training. This wasn't what I needed as I felt flat and tired so the prospective of taking all the reps myself didn't fill me with optimism. I had hoped to repeat the success with Smithy from Saturday but he is racing 10k tomorrow. I tried to wake up and concentrate on the jog and drills to get myself going. I felt quite crap this evening and I am feeling very drained a lot at the moment. I decided to feel my way into the session and was more concerned with getting it done than flying on it. I felt very easy but a bit shitty. It was weird, I just didn’t want to run any quicker than I was doing on the 6s so it was as if I found my comfort zone and my body simply wouldn’t come out of it. It wasn’t just a question of speed though as I felt fantastic on the 200s. It’s amazing how much difference, probably psychologically, not leading every rep makes as Elliott took over on rep 3 and it felt like we were jogging for the first 200; I expected the split to be 35 but it was 32! On all the 600s I was running through the line smoothly without any real fatigue. On the 5th one I had the urge to stop and walk as I was started to get a bit tired. Apparently I looked excellent tonight and Phil said it was the best my running form has been for a long time; this has to be good. I could have done another set but Phil said I was best to just do 5. I felt fresh as a daisy warming down, a la Saturday. I got home and watched some of Huddersfield against Millwall and then just lazed about until I felt properly tired as I knew I could sleep in tomorrow and I wanted to fall straight to sleep tonight. As a bit of casual toilet literature I read Emil Zatopek's section in the book 'Running with the Legends' that my Mum bought me a while back. I love everything this guy was about and I doubt anyone will ever rival his achievement of winning 5, 10 and marathon in the Olympics as it is a quite ridiculous feat. I'd recommend this book to anyone as there are about 15 different contributions. I'm not really looking forward to the Lasse Viren one mind...