Getting Slower – Review your Training!
I went for a ride around the Pendam Trail at Nant yr Arian yesterday. I was on my hardtail as I’ve yet to get a seatpost for my newly rebuilt Commencal Meta 5. I started off at a steady pace in perfect conditions, sunny, cool and barely any wind. By the time I got to the visitor centre I’d taken 15 minutes and felt quite good so from there on I went pretty hard.
I felt as though I was flying at points and made it to spaghetti junction cross-roads at 25 minutes. I now started thinking about personal bests and my record times around the course. Unfortunately I couldn’t quite remember what it was. Was it 39 minutes? No, I’m sure I’ve done a 37!
Anyway, I kept pushing on and want flat out around the final third of the trail. Everything was hurting, my legs were on fire, my lungs were burning, this had to be fast. Flew down Hippity Hop, stopped my watch at 37:29, sounds pretty good to me but I won’t know if it was a record or not until I get home.
So, I did another easy loop of the Pendam Trail where I bumped into Rachel and Cameron (one of Morgan’s friends) so it really was easy and then headed home to check my times.
Despite being really hard and feeling fast, it was nowhere near a PB. It was close to my first recorded PB on the Pendam Trail back in June 2009 where I did 37:22, but since then I’ve done a 36:55 in April 2010 and then a 35:39 towards the end of April.
How did I do a 35:39? and why was I so far from it yesterday despite the pain and suffering. Guess I’d better look back at my training prior to April this year and do more of the same!
