2000 and Huh?: A Pace Oddity

Thursday May 5 saw me arise at 5:20am to meet Mister G over at Rotary Park for a 2 x 2km session. Felt a bit weary and sore from efforts earlier in the week.

Got over there and got through the 4.15km warm up. The warm-ups have been interesting - I felt particularly 'junked up' when I started, but about 3km in the blood started to run through my legs and I felt 'loosened' up. Finished the warm-up in about 21:22, with more pace coming in the last few laps.

I paced out the 9 stride gap between the finish line and the start of the 400 metres (I was in the second lane) and put a marker cone at each nine paces for each of the five laps I'd do. Did some stretches and 5 x 100 metre strides, and no sign of Mister G (it later transpired he'd texted me overnight advising as such).

This is where it gets odd. You might call last week I got through 3 x 2km in 7:38, 7:37 and 7:30. Well, today the aim was to run the first 2k in 10k pace (say, 3:50 per km, based on a 38:18 10k PB) and the second 2k in 5k pace (say, 3:40km per km, based on a 18:22 5km PB).

Well, I ran 7:56 and 7:46. I was very happy with both reps, in fact, I thought I'd flogged the second one. So, either:
- I have no idea about pacing
- I'm slow around a grass athletics track, or (most likely)
- I buggered the distance up.

I'll get down there on the weekend and slowly walk the 2km with the GPS. The GPS read 2.12 and 2.21km for both reps there, but is notoriously poor around that track.

Needless to say this left me a bit puzzled, and it was in this frame of mind I headed home to hand the car over to EliseS (she needed to get to work early) and run a slightly disconsolate 4.69km cool down in in 25m9s.