Yesterday, I ran 11.3 miles. Now there’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d be writing so soon.
I hadn’t originally intended on doing ‘the’ long training run at this stage – a whole two weeks into this regime – but earlier this week I read some advice which said that it’s best to do your long run a few weeks out from race day so that your body can have time to feel the benefit from it.
Heck, I hope I’ll start to feel the benefit at some point. All I’ve felt in the past 24 hours is a slightly achy achilles. Nothing that a bit of ice won’t fix, though.
Aside from having to cut my route short towards the end when I nearly interrupted a funeral procession, the run itself felt okay. I have no idea what my race pace will end up being, so I just went with the flow and ended up running 8:07/mi pace.
Earlier in the week, I’d done runs of 3.12M at 7:37/mi pace, 3.12M at 7:27/mi pace and 5.22M at 7:51/mi pace. Running at that kind of pace and putting in the long run gave me a bit of confidence, but I still feel as though I need to put in a fair few more miles before race day. I need to start channeling my inner-Kenyan.
I was blown away when I saw this week that the donations had reached £131. That’s pretty much exactly £10 per mile! Honestly, never did I think that this little endeavour would raise that much (which is partly why I never set a fund-raising target), so I’m really thankful to everyone who has donated.
I know my nan would have been really chuffed and it will genuinely help keep me plodding on when the going gets tough (which will probably be after 1.6 miles).
So a whole two weeks of training down, just three to go now. Why oh why didn’t I choose to sit in a bathtub full of baked beans instead?!
End-of-week total: 22.8 miles.
Training total: 42.5 miles.
(I’m now basically Wilson Kipsang)
