Quite quickly, I went from being grateful and excited to cold and worried… hence my expression above! It was a cold and windy morning but all-and-all I really enjoyed the Regents Park 10k. This was a true test of my winter fitness and I was so pleased with the result… 10k in 46:45! Woot! Very close to my personal best at this distance and I walked away without shin pain!

RACE REPORT: The start was delayed slightly which threw a curve-ball in my warmup plans. I was starting to get nervous at the start line that my shins would play up after going from cold and stationery to high intensity running.

If you’ve ever had shin splints than you’ll understand the strange sensation of their presence when their on the mend… you know something is off before it gets painful. In the first 2k of the race, I felt the presence of my shins – no pain, but they felt off. I tried running on the grass to lower the impact and just kept my pace steady until they settled down. After 2k, they were no longer my focus and I could finally start to focus on the race itself.

I didn’t bring my Garmin and just raced by feel… I found a group that looked like they had confidence in their pace and I just stuck by them. We brought up the pace for the last 1km but otherwise, it felt quite steady. Without tracking my time, I wasn’t sure what my finish time was until the results got posted later that day. I was well pleased with 46:45!! I would have been happy with anything under 50 minutes at this point in the season and in my running progress.

One thing I forgot was how hard high intensity running is on your body… I’m not used to it anymore! My training sessions this week were definitely affected by the race. My body took quite awhile to recover and just as I had, I came down with a cold! I won’t be up to much this weekend past long walks and drinking hot water with lemon, ginger and honey.

A post to come about recovery after high impact, high intensity sessions.