6:52.1

Yesterday I avoided the booze and whilst MBH knocked back the wine at the local Primary School quiz I stayed on the apple juice. I was somewhat disappointed therefore to go to bed feeling nauseous and wake up with a headache. Maybe it was the fish and chips at the quiz. Either way, I was not super optimistic about my 2,000m test today. For a variety of reasons I needed to do this at lunch time and I set off for the garage at 13:00 full of phlegm and trepidation.

The warm up felt all wrong, but that is not the first time so I set off. The game plan was 800m @ 1:43, 600m @ 1:42, 400m @ 141 and 200m @ 140 with an overall split of 1:42 and sub 6:50 time.

For the first 800m I felt good and held the 1:43 pretty well. Even the step change to 1:42 went well initially. I'd had a good start and my average split was 1:42.5 when I hit half way. After 1,000m it began to go wrong. I could not hold the split and so tried to keep at 1:43 in the hope that I could hang on for a 1:42.5 with the sprint for home. I dug in but I still think that my body is not used to the pain of this sort of effort. My heart rate was also much, much lower than I would expect at this point. After six minutes I stopped for a stroke but forced myself to get home in 6:52.1. Ow.

Looking at the data it appears that I hit my maximum heart rate of 177(! -I expect to hit 180 at 1,000m and go up from there) after about 4 minutes. At 5 minutes my heart rate began to fall. At 6 minutes I bonked with my heart rate at 174 - stopping for one stroke made that 100m 2 seconds slower than the ones either side. I got it back together but my heart rate never got above 174 for the last 50 seconds despite getting the split below 1:41 for the last 20 seconds.

Distance	Split	Av HR
500	1:42.4	144
1000	1:42.6	173
1500	1:43.0	177
2000	1:44.1	174

I am philosophical. I am clearly not right and still pulled a 6:52.1. I'll do another test when the C2 plan says and we'll see. I do have a target now - I want to lower that time by 22.2 seconds by BIRC 2007. That looks massive. I know that every second under a PB is torture but I will give it a go. My head says that anything sub 6:40 would be excellent at BIRC but my heart says "go for it!".

Metres today: 6,181