4/4/16 – Twenty’s Plenty

It’s fair to say neither of us have been exactly looking forward to Sunday’s 20 miler: our last long training run. Well, we are doing a half marathon next week, but these days, I’ve come to consider that as a middle distance. Oh, how times change…

Our 18 mile runs were fraught and fractured. And both of us felt as rough as feck for days afterward. With jetlag still lingering, we got finally out an hour after we’d initially planned, both full of trepidation and resolving to take it nice and easy. We’d discussed routes and come up with two roughly similar routes which we felt suited us individually.

The trouble with where we live is it’s difficult to find a really flat long run, everywhere local is undulating – unless we want to run around the park next door fumfty zillion times which isn’t really a realistic option. Whilst I try to ignore the gradients as best I can, Sue would rather avoid the worst of them and plotted her route accordingly.

As soon as I started running I immediately decided to change my plans, leading to a gentle, but steady uphill pull for most of the first two miles. It was a bit of a daft thing to run on virgin roads – you soon discover that what seems flat in a car, really isn’t. At least it ensured I didn’t set off too quickly, however as I’ve never really mastered the art of truly upping the pace in mid-run, I was resigned to a long, slow day.

At least I was faring better than Sue, who had come a right cropper after just 2.5 miles, grazing her knee and elbow. Thankfully, she was able to continue and put it quickly behind her. A real trooper.

I was taking extra care when my chosen course briefly took me onto the 181 bus route and I couldn’t help an involuntary shiver as I passed the spot of the incident three weeks ago.

We had both decided to loop back to house around halfway and stick closer to home in case we needed to stop. The first eleven miles were well within my comfort zone but after I’d had the pit stop at home, I faced another long pull upwards. This time though, it was for five miles and I found it tougher than I’d envisaged.

After another quick water break at my sister’s after 14.5 miles, I found it difficult to keep running, especially as the next mile and a half was the steepest part of the whole route ending up atop Spout Hill opposite the late, great Ronnie Corbett’s home. Given what I learned on the nightmare run. I decided that occasionally slowing from a slow trot to a brisk walk really wasn’t the end of the world, adding only a minute to my per mile split.

Although I was walking for about a tenth of a mile out of every half mile or so, I didn’t feel unwell in myself as I had on the 18 miler. Although the last four miles were hard-going and the shin cramps were causing the occasional disruption again, it was, at least, nearly all downhill.

With two miles left, I spotted Sue just ahead of me. Her differing route meant she was still a couple of miles behind me, but that’s good I thought, some motivation to keep me running to try and catch her up. No such luck. With the wind in her sails and going downhill, she was out of sight in no time at all, thus I dispiritedly went back to run/walk intevals.

My eventual time was shade under 4:20 – an big improvement on the 18 mile time. Sue trundled in 20 minutes later. Sure it wasn’t the greatest of times, but the doubts sown by the nightmare run had been eased somewhat. And I did feel that I will be able, when push comes to shove, to keep going for another 6 miles, even if the pace on those last few miles will probably be in excess of 15 minutes… by that stage, I’m sure it’ll be all about finishing the race rather than going for a time.

That evening we were both stiff and tired, as you’d expect, but not so much that we couldn’t go and enjoy dinner at Sue’s parents. Despite a very restless night and an attack of disco legs, my ill effects of the run had disappeared completely the next morning which was a real boost. Understandably Sue’s cuts and bruises from her fall were still giving her some gyp, but that aside she was arose in similarly good overall fettle.

With the hard yards under our belt, we move onto tapering down before the big day less than 3 weeks away.

It’s all getting very real now.