easing down

for the first time in a long while, i gave a session a miss yesterday/last night, whilst at coombe dingle on tuesday, whilst i was running further ahead of people i would usually leave behind, i was still running rather quite easily. the session was 6 minutes, followed by 2x3 minutes, followed by 3 x 2mins short recovery 1 min 30, long recovery and just for good measure at the end a 8 minute effort was tagged on. mike said to me not to bother doing the thursday session if my legs weren't feeling fully recovered, and not to worry too much about it if i didn't as i wont lose any thing by not doing it and i wont gain any thing by doing it.decision made. the effort now is entirely on being fresh for the big day on sunday. i asked mike whether or not he thought i was fit enough to beat 80 mins and the answer was a straight no and he said that 85 minutes was a more realistic target. i do wonder sometimes how much of what he says is actually what he genuinely thinks and how much is him trying to get people fired up for the races with a bit of what can quite easily be perceived as criticism. its certainly stung me in to action a few trimes before. i have been warned about this though go off to quick and it will hurt like hell and could take a few weeks to recover properly. i'll bear that in mind but i still feel like going for 1:20, i've got my heart and mind set on it far too much now. does that sound like a recipe for disaster? i hope not, but 13.1 miles is a long long way and the early pace will feel easy. but i'm a gritty little fucker and the more i get in to this running lark the tougher i'm becoming and the better i am at holding on when things start to go tits up, but hopefully not on sunday!