Longleat 10k and a blowout!
Normally when I say "blowout" I mean pizza with a side of wildebeest, but this was a tyre at 65 on the way to the first race of the year. Very exciting indeed - luckily, it was a nice day and the traffic cops came along to play human cones while I changed the wheel on the hard shoulder. Drama around jacking points (the proper one was too low sans tyre, the improvised one was too high) ended up with some dive weights being used to block up the jack... they've now been pressed flat by the weight of the van (!) New tyre please. Lessons learned: (1) check your spare; (2) get a yellow vest to accompany the triangle for roadside repairs.
Having done all that, I exploited the hospitality of![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
despaer and ehutch (it turns out that Bierkeller air-guitar skill translates to GH3) before scurrying off to a truly beautiful morning at Longleat. Bright sun, blue skies, a big posh house and crikey, xeeny and fialta on the start line!
The race itself was exactly what I wanted: it's a 'C' race to start the year off and make sure I train up for the half-marathon in March. The course is undulating (hill! death! hill! death!) and about 3 minutes off PB - and I got 1:00:45, which is indeed 3 minutes off my flat PB. That's encouraging because I trained for the PB and blagged this one a bit. And now I'm in a nice place where I know what needs work and look forward to doing it. Left ankle aching from sheer pounding (get down to aboout 90-92kg race-weight from this winter's lurgy high of 97 and that goes away), right knee grumbling (stretch, man, stretch! this is the same knee that blows on long rides).
The gadget says, hooray, that it was a TE5 run. See,ravenbait, I do them occasionally! ;) In fact apart from a little red-zone, I was in the thing's zone 3 the whole time, with an average HR of 165 (max 178). A steady flat kilo speed of about 5:40 was a pleasant surprise; hills were slow, descents were a bit crazy-fast. All good. The pace alarm was of limited use on such a rolling course, but there were a few moments where I zoned out and a quick check got me back up to speed.
And they didn't sic the lions on the back markers either. Yay.
Having done all that, I exploited the hospitality of
despaer and ehutch (it turns out that Bierkeller air-guitar skill translates to GH3) before scurrying off to a truly beautiful morning at Longleat. Bright sun, blue skies, a big posh house and crikey, xeeny and fialta on the start line!The race itself was exactly what I wanted: it's a 'C' race to start the year off and make sure I train up for the half-marathon in March. The course is undulating (hill! death! hill! death!) and about 3 minutes off PB - and I got 1:00:45, which is indeed 3 minutes off my flat PB. That's encouraging because I trained for the PB and blagged this one a bit. And now I'm in a nice place where I know what needs work and look forward to doing it. Left ankle aching from sheer pounding (get down to aboout 90-92kg race-weight from this winter's lurgy high of 97 and that goes away), right knee grumbling (stretch, man, stretch! this is the same knee that blows on long rides).
The gadget says, hooray, that it was a TE5 run. See,
ravenbait, I do them occasionally! ;) In fact apart from a little red-zone, I was in the thing's zone 3 the whole time, with an average HR of 165 (max 178). A steady flat kilo speed of about 5:40 was a pleasant surprise; hills were slow, descents were a bit crazy-fast. All good. The pace alarm was of limited use on such a rolling course, but there were a few moments where I zoned out and a quick check got me back up to speed.And they didn't sic the lions on the back markers either. Yay.
And in lieu of the official race results and photos, here's an ultramungous composite of the facade of Longleat House. (Yes, I have blending issues)