Week 5 of Rhi's road to 10k

I've written a new song and it goes like this:

Quarantine is weird
Quarantine is weird
I'm cleaning everything around me
Quarantine is weird

I've watered all my plants
And rearranged my lamps
I'm running out of things to clean cos
Quarantine is weird...

Potentially lots more verses coming soon.

Anyway Week 5 of my training has ended, hasn't it. Isn't that fancy. The world is still upside down but imma keep running.

In three words, Week 5 of training was:

• windy
• stealthy
• long

Here's the rundown:

Day 1

Run stats

• Goal: A 30 minute run + 10 minute surge
• Distance achieved: 5.05km
• Moving time: 31:10 (minutes:seconds)
• Pace: 6:10 / km

Thoughts: A speedy run! I ended up skipping the 'surge' I was meant to do at the end because who's got the mental energy for dodging humans at full speed?! This social distancing thing isn't being followed by everyone in the park, lemme tell ya. Got some "best estimated" personal records though.

Day 2

Run stats

• Goal: A 20-30 minute run, plus 6 x 100m sprints
• Distance achieved: 4.59km
• Moving time: 33:23 (minutes:seconds)
• Pace: 7:16 / km

Thoughts: A slower pace this time, so that Peaches the pup could run with us (and so I could keep up too!). As I mentioned, the park is a busy place right now, but at least that brings life some variety, and on Day 2 of this week, we were brought a ferret. Off lead. I don't think Peaches could quite see it slithering along the path as it was pretty camouflaged, but she was a bit spooked. As for the sprints, I managed four in total. SPRINTING IS HARD.

Here's Peaches the pup sensing something was up (it was, in fact, a man walking his pet ferret)

Day 3

Run stats

• Goal: A 60 minute 'easy' run
• Distance achieved: 6.8km
• Moving time: 1:00:01 (hours:minutes:seconds)
• Pace: 8:50 / km

Thoughts: I made the mistake of running away from the wind at the start of my run, which made the second half difficult as heck as I was running towards it at my most tired. Ugh. This was the first time I've deliberately headed out for a 60 minute run, and it was daunting. Admittedly, I walked some hills and occasionally some flat bits too, both to catch my breath and make sure I was keeping my distance from humans in the park and on pavements. So it wasn't a continuous run, but dammit I tried my best. I used a guided run from the Nike Run Club app ('1 Hour Run' I think it was called) - my favourite parts were when the narrator asked quick fire questions to distract my brain, like "what was the last thing you ate?" and "ketchup or mustard on hotdogs?". Okay I can only remember the food-related ones.

All in all, it was a weird week. But fitting in my three runs helped a lot. Onto Week 6!