W7 D4 & 5 Warmup and long run

The weekend saw two contrasting days of weather. Awaking on Saturday to a blue sky and the sun out (still cold!) I relished the opportunity to get out and go for a run. Saturdays run is only a short run at slow pace and I did a 5M loop up to my old school and back, used my new trainers again to try bed them in a little more as I’m not sure my other trainers will see me through to the big day.

The run was great, no issues and nice to be able to run with the sun in my eyes – makes a pleasant change to the previous runs I have done recently.

Sunday, on the other hand, was the opposite. Heading down to Southend to participate in a training run, I had to wake early and was greeted with rain hitting the windows and the hum of wind circling the building – perfect!

Leaving the house at 730 was a challenge, especially having had to rat and prepare for the 16 miler I was planning to do but eventually got out. My lovely girlfriend, perhaps foolishly, offered to get up early on her last day off and drive me down there so I got to ‘relax’ on the journey down.

As mentioned the plan was to do 16M, looking at the schedule this was to be done in 2hours 30 (a 9:20 pace) this was not going to be the case today it became clear fairly soon. Making the most of running with company I latched onto the shoulder of Neil D and another runner Ian, they had said they hoped to run at 8:30 also, after running about 4M I also found out they were going to do 18M rather than 16M.

11M into the run still maintaining a sub 8:30 pace I finally started to flag, clearly my body isn’t up for that quite yet- I dropped down and did a mile at 8:45 but then managed to get back to 8:30 for the final half marathon mile. Managed to run the 13.1M in 1:49:57 I think it was which considering I could still chat and wasn’t completely passed out I was pretty damn happy with. That said from 13 on things went downhill pretty badly, possibly because I was on my own my legs became lethargic and I slowed down.

I decided to call it a day at 16, my body didn’t need the extra few miles of which one of was all uphill. I wanted to be able to train again on Tuesday and didn’t want to risk injury. I had to get a lift back to the hospice but managed another rather slow mile to bring my total to 17M in 2:25 of which I’m thoroughly happy with 15ish – considering the final two miles were poor I still averaged an 8:37 run!

One of the things I’m going to have to work on is my pacing – there is no point running a 1hr50 half and then not being able to run the second half!

Cheers to all the chaps I ran with on Sunday, makes a change to get pushed which is brilliant!

Till next time.

N