Day 54 - Thursday 5th August: Stanford - 7 laps

Run: 7.62 miles
Time: 59 minutes 59 seconds



This evening's plan was a brisk 60 minutes, so I decided to run 6 laps of the 1.1 mile circuit round the village, thinking at about 9 minutes a lap I could add an extra 5-minute loop at the end to clock up the hour. To make sure I did brisk laps I thought I'd run a couple of sections a bit faster than the rest - the first up the short stretch of "hill" up Glebe Road, and then a longer section from the turning of Joyces Road down along the A417 past the Horse & Jockey to the High Street. I took the first lap "steady" and was pleased to run the first mile in 8:08, so tried to up the pace, with the faster sections on the next lap onwards.

Could I make all 6 laps at an 8-minute pace? At this rate I can also easily run another half lap and cut through the new estate to get back home in the hour and that would be over 7 miles. As each lap passed I expected to need to slow down - having only run this kind of pace over 5 miles before. Or I'd have to stop when crossing a side road to give way to a car coming in or out, and this would throw my pace right off, but luckily the only car I saw, saw me in good time and stopped to wave me on, so I barely missed a beat.

Things just got better and on the "last" lap, number 6, I worked out if I cut through the footpath and up Church Path, then I should just about be able to make most of a 7th lap too, so I went for it. The 7th lap was hard to start with, I could feel I was flagging. The sprint up the short hill knocked me for a bit, I could feel myself wobbling as I was running further than planned (and faster), but I ignored my inner doubt, and just told myself to get on with it, it wasn't far to go. Keep it up and I'd make 7½ miles in an hour. So I kept up a good pace to finish, and managed another sprint up Church Path, less than 30 seconds to go to get home... and I made it all the way back home, with 1 second to spare, even avoiding being run over by my brother-in-law.