Fair Havens Training Run 12.5 Miles

On Friday evening I headed down to Rayleigh and had a meal with a number of the people running in this years FLM for the havens group. It was a good evening and I managed to have a chat with a few people who it turns out were all hoping to run a similar time to me as well as a physios and masseur.

The group have 3 scheduled training runs from now until the marathon. I am away for the next one so thought it would be a good idea to head down this morning and see how it was. The run was good – we stuck as a pack for 80% of the route running at what was apparently 9min mile pace (sub 4 hour marathon time). It was a VERY early start for me, especially as I had to drive down to Rayleigh, hence the alarm was set for 6:45 (almost an hour earlier than my normal work day start time!) and had hit the road by 730.

The Course

The course started off quite nice. The first 8/9 miles were actually fairly enjoyable. The group was running together and at a pace where we could hold conversation. I have never been to Rayleigh, so the route was a complete unknown to me other than the passing comments from others to expect some hills at the end. This was by no means an understatement. At about mile 9 I believe it was, we hit a fairly steep incline and from that point on it felt that there was a consistent rise in gradient. The last 3.5 miles certainly tested me. I think I’m going to have to routinely put in half marathon distances as 10miles seems to be the cut point from what seems “easy”.

All in all though a good run, testing, but what I need. Also fairly happy that there a group of runners for FH all running around my pace.

No rest for me it looks like though – hence a day off running tomorrow but back to the roads on Tuesday…