What a difference a week makes

Distance: 20 miles
Time: 3:02

Last week I ran the 2nd leg of this route into a gale force wind and suffered badly, limping home in a time of 3:16. Today, although there was a bit of a breeze, the weather was much kinder. I even confronted my demons head on by picking up the pace from miles 10-15 when I turned back into the breeze.

So the run worked out as 10 miles easy (circa 9.30/mi), 5 miles slightly quicker than marathon pace (circa 8.30-9.00/mi) and 5 miles easy to finish up (circa 9.30/mi). Needless to say, I feel much happier after this run than I did a week ago.

That makes 4 consecutive weekly 20 mile long runs, which I am very glad to have got under my belt. Next week I'll probably do another, and then go into a mini-taper for the 10k the following weekend. My mileage has been in the 40+ range for the last few weeks so I probably could do with cutting back for one week just to give the body a break. Once the 10k is out of the way, I think I'll be able to fit in two hard weeks of 50+ miles before tapering for three weeks for the big event on 11 June - one day I'll actually work it out aganst a calendar.