sometimes it takes me a while and most importanlty I need to experiment things practically before realising I'm wrong. it must be my italian blood!!

let me start from the beginning.

i am slow runner. a slow runner who's trying to get faster. a slow runner who finds a semi-professional 'virtual coach' (a friend who lives in italy) to design a new training plan for her:-)

i am at week 5 of the plan now and for the first time in my running life I have had to do today long intervarls with a recovery run - rather than a walk. so: 4 1km with 400m recovery run. I ask my guy for the pace t keep. he says 5'30 for the km and 6'15 for the 400m (or if you prefere 8:48minutemile for the km and 10:00 for the 400m).

I think....no, I can actually do 5'00 and can easily recover during those 400m, yes! I always recover well.....so off I go and I soon realise that there is actually a great difference between a recovery walk and a recovery run.

I start quite fast and I soon see that my heartbeat doesn't go down as quickly in my recovery run and I feel soooo tired and stupid!

these are the splits: 4’57 (6’09) 5’18 (6’11) 5’34 (6’33) 5’22 (6’25). it was really a killer of a run.

I guess not everything is bad about tonight's run and there are positive things if we look closely at it (veeery closely!):
1) I finally learnt my lesson :-) from now on I'll stick to what he says
2) I kept going and pushed myself as much as I possibly could. that must be better that packing up and going home, right?
3) a few months ago I wouldn't have even dreamt of keeping this pace

now I am exhausted :-)