My Imaginary Friend...

Having done a long run on Wednesday night this week, my schedule has been thrown out of pattern a bit. I had to draw my attention away from the cricket last night to think about my plan for the next 9 days before City to Surf.

I got as far as deciding to go for a run this morning. I'll have to think about the other days during today.

So the plan was to try to follow the "Virtual Partner" (my imaginary friend) on my Forerunner. I set it to target 7km in 36 minutes (5:09/km pace) - on the basis that that equates to about 1h15m for the City to Surf, according to the race pace calculator I've been using (more on that later).

For those that aren't Forerunner aware - you can get it to display how far ahead or behind of this pace you are - hence the "Virtual Partner" description.

So I set off on a familiar route, keeping a fairly close watch on the read-out. I was pleased that what felt like my normal pace was keeping me ahead of the pace.

The details were:

• 1st km in 4:52
• 2nd km in 4:46
• 3rd km in 4:48
• 4th km in 4:47
• 5th km in 4:56
• 6th km in 4:56
• 7th km in 5:19

To give a total time of 34:24 for the 7km, which equates to 1:11:43 pace for C2S.

Now I should explain that from 1.5km to 5.5km, the route dropped by 75m, i.e. a -2% gradient and the last 1.5km rises by 25m, i.e. +2% gradient. (I wonder if there's a formula out there to convert w minutes per km at x gradient into y minutes per km at z gradient?)

So back to that pace calculator. I wonder how accurate they are. Do they suit everybody? Should I set my "Virtual Partner" to target 14km in 75 minutes and push myself to follow the pacer? I guess that there are so many variables; like congestion, course profile, et.c. - which would affect the achievement of any pace, that it's just not reasonable to allow the pacer to dictate too much.

Clearly it's going to be very useful in training, on known routes.

I'll have a think about my planned sessions for the next week or so and make some commitment here later.

In other news. Woke up this morning to see a decent score posted by England in the cricket. Although I certainly won't get too excited by that until we see how the Aussies fair in their 1st innings.

I've often thought that they should be able to measure the actual status of one teams performance against the other, considering all the variables like weather & wicket conditions as well as previous scores at that ground in similar conditions - so that we can see who is ahead at any one point in time. I'm sure this would encourage more interest in test cricket.

Just a thought!