Hastings 5 Miler

Lesson learnt from today that I don’t do well running in the heat!! Once we’d started, I noticed my watch was set to KM which wasn’t helpful as I didn’t know the Km equivalent. Ended up googling it as I was running – turns out to be approx. 6:10m/km, so I aimed for that. Watch was showing between 6:26 and 6:40 for first 4 km and that felt pretty comfortable and I enjoyed the shade of bottle alley. (Looking at Strava now, it’s showing below 9:30 minute miles for the first two miles which doesn’t tie into the watch timing (as that would be circa 5:53/km. So really not sure what’s going on there). Again enjoyed the shade on the way back past the Azure, then just after that I really struggled in the heat, it hit me like a wall. Then again just past the skate park where the pavement type changed. I had nothing left so stopped pushing and tucked in behind another HR runner until the top of the underpass , then let gravity work in my favour and kicked for home. I was surprised how much kick I had left. Overall, enjoyed some of it, the support along the route from Marshalls and other HR was great. I now need to consider how I handle the heat…. do I change the time of my runs to the hotter part of the day to be more acclimatised or do I just pick races that aren’t going to be hot… …. And turns out I’ve got a full blown cold 🤧 and feeling pretty ropey!