I took a wrong turn at Abergavenny and mysteriously ended up in Blaenavon.... Lucky for me there was a fell race taking place out of the Whistle Inn - what were the chances? [wink]
It turns out they alternate the course between clockwise and anti-clockwise. So the split times I hadn't written down for several points on route - because it was a mistake I ended up in Blaenavon, right - weren't any good for gauging my performance against last year. So I set off with the main aim of running the entire thing. No walking on any of the ascent and apart from one small blip where I working so hard I was almost sick, I achieved that aim, and that's includes making it all the way on the first and main climb out from the start.
The undulating route around the main loop was much more undulating than I remembered and I had to keep working hard. Despite losing a couple of places there I held things together and reached the finish, with my heart rate up on 186bpm, as I powered across the line in 46:55. That's over three minutes quicker than last year but not directly comparable as it was run in the other direction. It's still the same distance (9.2km) and overall ascent (300m) so I'm confident it's a better performance by a good margin.
For the stats my average heart rate for the run was 172bpm. I think I was 12th overall, although that is subject to the actual results and my Strava VAM for the first climb smashed my most recent high score, from April, out of the water, weighing in at 1025 as compared to 850.
Next up is another pesky road race on Tuesday evening...
It turns out they alternate the course between clockwise and anti-clockwise. So the split times I hadn't written down for several points on route - because it was a mistake I ended up in Blaenavon, right - weren't any good for gauging my performance against last year. So I set off with the main aim of running the entire thing. No walking on any of the ascent and apart from one small blip where I working so hard I was almost sick, I achieved that aim, and that's includes making it all the way on the first and main climb out from the start.
The undulating route around the main loop was much more undulating than I remembered and I had to keep working hard. Despite losing a couple of places there I held things together and reached the finish, with my heart rate up on 186bpm, as I powered across the line in 46:55. That's over three minutes quicker than last year but not directly comparable as it was run in the other direction. It's still the same distance (9.2km) and overall ascent (300m) so I'm confident it's a better performance by a good margin.
For the stats my average heart rate for the run was 172bpm. I think I was 12th overall, although that is subject to the actual results and my Strava VAM for the first climb smashed my most recent high score, from April, out of the water, weighing in at 1025 as compared to 850.
Next up is another pesky road race on Tuesday evening...
No comments:
Post a Comment