5k in the Gym

How could I resist?

I got the call at the right moment. The phone rang, I picked up, got some German, replied in French and the slick lady from the gym instantly switched to English "So, M. a 'ave a veree spesial offer for you today...."

Not even 24 hours go by before I'm signed up, blagged a spare towel ticket and on the running machine.

In the gym nice and early before you need to queue up for a machine and the few people already running nod at me and some even smile. So far so good. The runing machine speaks no English and I get the distinct feeling that minute miles won't be poping up anytime soon on this little Euro trash screen in front of me.

So it's km par minute pour moi and on y va. I use the first km to warm up and notice two annoying things. No heel strike, but right leg is kicking out to the outside rather than simply just going up. Or is it just that the maching is not at right angles to the mirror, hard to tell. Second issue is the bobbing head. I try to focus on that and drift forward on the machine whacking my hand on the control panel. Opps.

First km takes for ever and is close to 5mins, so I nudge it up to what feels like a shade off 10km pace (turns out to be 4:36 minutes par km) and I hold that ok for a couple of kms.

By now I'm going miles faster than anyone else and the machine is shaking. I notice the poor guy next to me crashing into the ground with locked knees heel first - not pretty and very loud. I get a feeling that I'm being watched.

Get very bored and decide to ramp the pace to 4 min kms for the last one. Half a km in I start feeling dizzy and light headed, but figure I can just hold it for the rest of the km. I'm really working now and focus on holding the form over the effort and catch myself drifting forwards, but correct it before hitting the control panel. With all eyes on me now there is no way I'm not finishing this km at 4 min pace. I watch the screen mock me as the 10m ticks take for ever to spin around. Then suddenly I'm done. 5km in 23 mins, with one km at race pace.

Now the speed work is in the bag I'm going easy and long soon....