Day 79 - Monday 30th August: Charney 18

Run: 18.00 miles
Time: 2h53m26s



Back home and back to normal training. Today saw my delayed weekend LSR - a distance of 18 miles. Last time I ran this route, I kept going all the way home, covering about another three-quarters of a mile. Today I stopped at 18 miles, and used the walk back through the village as my warm-down.

I tried to run this at a ten-minute-mile pace, but I still find it hard to run that slowly now. I wasn't far off though. The first half was good, with no problems to speak of. The weather was good, sunny, not too hot, with a light breeze.

The second half was harder work though, my legs were definitely tired after about ten miles, and knowing the full route was almost 19 miles was not a thrilling prospect. However once out of Southmoor, I decided that I'd do what I did when I first ran this route, and stop when I'd reached the required distance, and just walk the last section back home. This cheered me up, and spurred me on.

In fact rather than slowing to a 10+ minute mile pace (as I had started to do), I sped up considerably for the last 4 miles, and made them in ever increasing times:
9m15s - 9m13s - 8m52s & 8m10s. I think that was pretty good, to be able to run just outside an 8-minute-mile having just run 17 beforehand!