Vom paced repeats

I've been following my good friend @Malcsbarbour on the Runners world and Asics 26.2 challenge.  We met on the runners world forum last year and camped in a big group together at TR24, although he was a different team.  He's aiming for a sub 3:30 marathon having narrowly missed out by 3 minutes last year at the Great Welsh marathon which was a 26 minute pb for him.  With my aim of sub 3:45 I'm looking at taking a similarly significant chunk off my previous best marathon time of 4:18 in Halstead.  Based on advice from others, the fact that Manchester is flat versus Halstead's undulating route is probably worth about 10 minutes of marathon time.  So the other 23 minutes has to come from increased fitness and better race.  Which is still a big ask.  

I've been happily following my Hal higdon plan, but having already spent 10 weeks before starting that, I'd been starting to feel that I could afford to do some more interesting sessions than either running at easy pace, or marathon pace.  Plus, I have a half marathon coming up that I want to pb in.

So, I decided to do a session from Malcs schedule.  He happily provided me guidance on how to adjust the paces for my ability.  

The session was: warm up, 3x 2000m @ 7:17-7:30mm pace with 3 minutes recovery, then cool down.  Hopefully this would get me to a 7-8 mile run.  I decided to do all the repeats in Colchester Castle park, so I could use the imagination of running the Parkrun to get me up to pace.

Despite a 2 mile warm up, I still felt it was a bit tough to pick up the pace, but then quickly the garmin was bleeping to slow down.... I had almost reached the 2k point, but had reached the end of the river path and had to exit the park.  Not enough distance before a steep uphill, so had to turn around and eventually re-entered the park.  That was really hard, and I had to walk for a large chunk of the recovery section before I brought it up to the gentle jog again.

When I started the second rep, like always, it started off a bit fast with pacing well below 7mm, so I eased off.  About a third of the way through the rep, I was looking at the swans and wondering various thoughts and my pace began to drop off.  My tummy also felt a bit off, and like I might need to make am impromptu toilet stop.  I then remembered an article I had recently read in runners world magazine about mental focus in running, and how so much of the marathon especially is about what's in the mind.  Generally your pace slows because your mind is wandering.  I refocused and finished the rep faster than the first.  The slow rep was more of a jog to start with, but my Tum was still feeling a bit off and I did feel like I might vomit, so I eased off until the discomfort subsided.  Usually I recover quite fast and don't need the full time that's suggested for recovery, but not in this session.  In this recovery rep, I wondered about pausing the garmin so I could have another minute rest, but I got on with it.  The sooner I started the next rep, the sooner the workout would be done.  But I went for it.... It seemed dog walkers who were oblivious to the danger of a 7mm runner coming toward their dogs were out in force, looking to figure out the path I was going to take and making sure they obstructed it.  This resulted me storming past them on the muddy edge of the path to avoid them, mucking up my new trainers which I want to wear for the marathon.

Once I caught my breath and jogged back I apologised, explaining that at that pace it's incredibly hard to change direction significantly, but they weren't too perturbed luckily!

The reps were done in the following times:

9:16

9:08

9:07

Or the following paces:

7:25mm

7:19mm

7:18mm

And luckily, I didn't ACTUALLY vomit...