Midweek: back down to earth 5K

It was nice while it lasted.

Headed out for another lunchtime run today, again intending to do fairly flat loops near work, but I completely failed to replicate Tuesday's pace. Pushing myself every bit as hard (I felt), I was going to do 3 laps of the Millennium Bridge and the Swing Bridge, each lap being roughly 1.5km if memory serves. After just 1km, however, I was already struggling, with Google Fit reporting a 5:14/km pace. 😞

Had Tuesday not happened, I would've been perfectly happy with that as a first kilometre. Today, however, all I could think was that it was about 45 seconds per kilometre slower than I'd been 2 days ago. To give myself the best chance of picking up the pace, I decided to minimise the amount of pedestrian dodging required for the rest of the run. To that end, I abandoned my quayside laps in favour of heading upriver towards Dunston Staithes.

A gentle breeze blowing down the Tyne then felt like running into a gale as I continued to struggle. The left knee started to complain. Overall, I was just a bit of a mess. The second kilometre passed at what sounded like the same pace as the first. At the third kilometre announcement, I didn't even register what pace it was except that it wasn't awesome — I was just focused on that being the turning point.

From there, I had the wind behind me, but it felt like I was running at almost the same pace as it; I barely felt a push at my back. Again I tried to pick up the pace, but it never felt fast.

So, by the time I finally made it back to the guild hall, I was more than ready to stop and more than a little disappointed. Sure, I'd pushed hard the whole way — harder, it felt, than on Tuesday — but the pace just hadn't been there. Later, I would calculate the true distance I did on Tuesday and feel a bit better (my real pace had been around 5:07/km that day), but I guess it's a good reminder that's not every day can be a PB type of day.