Tuesday session - 10 minutes solid, 5 minutes jog, 8 x 60 sec/60 sec on/off (am) + 8km recovery (pm)

Another new session this morning. Looked fairly easy on paper. Very deciptive as I found out. Decided to run it at North Head. Initially thought that it would be good to really give the 10 minutes a go on a dead flat course to see what pace I could hold, but came to the conclusion that the undulating nature of North Head would be better for training - and less crowded! After warming-up, I got stuck into the session. The first two kilometres of the 10 minutes are a net downhill, so the last half was mentally tough. Went from holding 3:02's to 3:07's within the space of a few hundred meters at about the 7 minute mark. Managed to dig deep for the last minute to knock it down a second to 3:06's. This was proceeded by a 5 minute easy jog - which, as always, went far too quick (not pace-wise, just time-wise) before starting part two - 8 x 1 minute efforts with 1 minute recovery jogs between. Not too sure how to pace this one, but simply remembered that I had to do eight, so quite a few. I was up and down, hovering just under the 3:00 minute/km pace mark. Averaged 335m for all eight, so 2:59 pace. The good news was that my last one was amongst my quickest, so I didn't complete it in typical Lewis fashion by blowing up for the last rep! 5.7km cooldown back home for 17km all up. This was in fact a session for two reasons - firstly, it actually felt like two separate sessions, which I quite like. Didn't even think about the one minute efforts until I finished the 10 minute effort. And secondly, it really highlighted how little work I have actually done on my top end speed. I know that I have done 400's in the form of Quarter's, but these are done under immense fatigue, rendering it impossible to really get some fast efforts out. This was great as the 60 second jog recoveries, whilst not sufficient to fully recover, were still reasonable enough to allow me to attack each subsequent effort at 90-95%. Lastly, I set a new record HRMax according to my Garmin (note, I really question the accuracy of this thing) - 187 beats per minute! Might be time for pacemaker!

8km easy just before lunch. Shark signs still out in Manly, but that didn't stop me this morning, nor will it stop me now! 4:36's at 122 beats per minute.