Ah, Mother’s Day. A day for lie ins, breakfast in bed, pampering and indulgence.
Or, err, a 6am start and a 24 mile run. Still, I did get bought a cup of tea in bed afterwards.
Yesterday was my longest run in the pre-London marathon training period – quite a long way out, but I’m doing Reading half next weekend, and the Surrey Spitfire 20 the weekend after so there will be plenty more hard efforts to come. I found myself feeling really nervous beforehan, but the run itself went fine, and the slightly cooler weather and faint drizzle in the air were probably bonuses, for running if nothing else.
My coach, David Chalfen, had suggested 23 or 24 miles, with a cut off time of 3 hrs 05mins so that if I slowed up too much, I wouldn’t grind out too much time on legs. In the event I hit 24 at 3hrs 03mins. Which, I worked out, was a higher average pace than my actual London marathon time last year. Amazing that that’s now a training run. Albeit terrifying to think how much faster I’ll have to run in six weeks …
I can’t say I achieved a whole lot else yesterday, other than the consumption of a particularly fine pizza (hey, I’m still waiting for the sponorship offer, Franca Manca, it’s been weeks now …) and a lot of caffeine. But it’s good to have those miles in the bag.
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