Need for speed

Apparently, one of the fundamentals that I need to be concentrating on is shorter distances and higher speeds so that I can up the ante and reduce the time of my run, which up untl today stood at a woeful 34 minutes for the 5k. With that in mind I trotted over to the gym this evening (I did try to wake up on time this morning but my legs simply refused to co-operate ... so I pressed the snooze button and hit the sack again for another hour) intending to run a 5k at a 'decent' pace allowing me to run a 30 minute 5k. I set the treadmill at 10kmph and headed off, 6 minutes and 1km into the run I decided to up the ante just a tad and upped the speed by 0.1, at the second kilometre the speed went up to 10.2 and so on and so forth, so that by the 5th and last kilometre I was running at 10.4kmph. I just about made it, the last 800metre were hard but I persevered and stuck it out. The result? 5k in 29.36 - I'm happy with the time but realistically speaking I won't (at this stage) manage that pace in the race after all the previous efforts, so I'm going to have to work much harder on my running. By race day a 5k at a 10.5kmph pace should feel like a walk in the park.

After the 5k (and since there was still about 15 minutes of the Chelsea vs Barcelona game left and I don't have Sky Sports at home) I decided to stay on at the gym, jump on a spinning bike and do 10 minutes of spinning (4 of which were up off the bike seat and doing the spinning equivalent of an incline). Just as got off the spinning bike Andres Iniesta scored and with that goal, entertaining football got through to the Champions league final. I hung around just enough to watch Michael Ballack make a complete fool of himself in what can be generously described as an emotional protest or alternatively a prolonged, very public, spoilt brat strop.

The two best teams in Europe will now meet in the final in what will hopefully be a spectacle of football ... talking of football spectacles, FIGO (not the player, but rather my work 5-a-side team) have a friendly on Friday, should be fun. No workout tomorrow (no time) early b'fast meeting and drinks in the evening means I can't fit a workout tomorrow morning or evening. After today the break will do me good (or that's what I tell myself).