Day 70 - Saturday 21st August: Southmoor 16

Run: 16.10 miles
Time: 2 hours 42 minutes 11 seconds



After a rather late night (read early morning) at a friend's housewarming barbecue yesterday, I put off today's LSR as long as possible. The weather forecast for today has promised heavy rain showers, so I'm not relishing the prospect of being out on the road for 2½+ hours, as no doubt I'll get soaked too. Oh well, the trials of training for a marathon. I'm sure I'll be fine.

I head off towards Park Lane, keeping my speed down to 10-minute-miles, making sure I'm not tempted to run a bit faster like I did last week. You're supposed to do these long runs slower than race pace, but I find it difficult to run much slower. Mind you since I didn't get a full night's sleep, it's not difficult to run a bit slower than normal today.

As I run towards Denchworth, I notice that the sky over to my left looks pretty grim & grey. Where I am it's blue with patches of cloud, but otherwise warm & sunny. There's a strong breeze to help keep my cool, but no immediate sign of the threatened downpour. I reach 4 miles, a quarter done already. I'm feeling good, but there's still a long way to go.

On the way to Hanney I take my first of two gels to keep me going. I'm juggling my drinks bottles, decanting the one that was half & half Lucozade Sport into the larger one with just Lucozade in it, so I can ditch the empty in the bin by the bus stop, along with my empty gel wrapper. I'm not paying attention to my feet and hit a pothole. Oops. Luckily I bend my ankle easily, and no harm is done. Perhaps all the gym classes I've been doing this year have paid off, and my feet are stronger and more flexible as a result? I should be more careful though.

Northward bound now, and Winter Lane usually lives up to its name, but not today. The wind which has picked up is behind me. Phew, I was dreading a headwind along this 3-mile section to Southmoor. It's a bit of a plod this bit, although passing the halfway point is pleasing. But I don't get complacent. It'll still be an hour & twenty minutes until I'm back in Stanford.

Still, I reach Southmoor, and I'm feeling quite good. Not great, but touch wood, today's run seems to be going ok. I certainly don't feel I've got any excess energy to pick up the speed, not that I want to. No matter, I just need to keep up this steady gentle pace. I reach ten miles and start planning my second gel. Maybe I'll leave it until I approach the straight North of Charney. There'd be abut 4½ miles to go then. However it's not long on this mile, and I feel myself flagging a bit, so opt for my gel straight away as a much needed pick me up.

Charney Bassett is in sight, but it feels like I'm running through treacle. Well, ok not as bad as that, but it does suddenly feel quite tough, and instead of feeling good knowing I've reached the three-quarters point, it feels like the next 40 minutes are going to be long ones. Mind you, there's still no sign of the soaking that I was expecting. Maybe I'll make it back in the dry after all?

Blip. Nearing the woods between Charney & Gainfield, and my Garmin tells me there are just 3 miles left, having completed 13. A bit further down the road and I notice the Half Marathon distance clock up. In about 2h13m. Part of me wants to quicken up at this point, there's not far to go now. That'll be my brain then. My legs, however, say no way. At Gainfield I start to feel a bit better, as there's less than 2 miles left now. And on the downhill, I do speed up here.

Back at Stanford, and I speed up again, I find some energy reserve that didn't appear to be there half an hour earlier, but I make the most of it, and run back home in order to get a huge pile of brown pasta on the go, with some mixed veg, a chopped chilli and pesto sauce. And five whirlpool poached eggs. I think I've earned a big dinner today, plenty of protein & complex carbs to help repair my overworked muscles...