Another very good week

Milestones.
I "savaged" my V50 Half Marathon PB at Bedford, taking 5 and a half minutes off the time I ran in Nottingham in September. I was chuffed to bits with that! My objective was to run at 8:15 pace to 10 miles and then see how I felt, but poor pace judgement and a general lack of self restraint saw me clock around 15:30 for the first 2 miles! Thereafter I drifted into a pace slightly slower than 8 minute miling for around 4 miles as the course undulated pleasantly. From 6 to 9 the course is pretty much uphill all the way and I had found I was pretty strong here. The quite rigorous hill sessions I have been doing in Wendover Woods on fridays have obviously started to have some effect! At 10 miles I realised that a sub 1:45 was possible if I "raced" the last 5k or so. Thankfully this was mainly downhill and I began to pick out runners ahead of me and "reel them in" gradually. I stopped my watch at 1:44:28, the last runner I passed being a "Bearbrook Jogger", a runner from the local club in Aylesbury.
Bedford Harriers need praising for this race. A really good course mainly on country lanes and enthusiastic encouraging marshals absolutely everywhere; a warm sports hall to warm up and cool down in - what more can a runner ask for?
The week ahead promised to be the most active one of my renewed training so far and on wednesday I set out for my 17 mile long run from Waitrose car park in Berkhamsted. Having tested the formula 2 weeks previously, it was again a "double out & back" on the Grand Union Canal towpath, with a pitstop for more sports drink after 11 miles. Once again I completed the run at a faster pace than was wise, a little over 9 mniute mile pace, and it began to hurt a little after 15 miles. Thankfully the "running mix" on my mp3 player kept me distracted and at the end I realised the benefits of a start / finish in a supermarket car park as I re-fuelled!
I feel that this run put my marathon bid for February for the first time in a seriously positive perspective. I finished knowing I could run quite a bit further at this pace if rested, and after all I had run a "fast" half marathon less than 72 hours before!
Confident - yes. Over-confident...perhaps!
Finally on friday I ran my longest session of hills in the woods to date - probably about 10 miles. The dog kept going, so I had to as well! So that was 3 really beneficial landmark runs in 5 days. But how I had I managed to book into a 10k race just 2 days later? Masochism of the highest order...and more on this in the next post.

Steady Progress

I'm a bit late with this post....no excuses, other than being computerless for a couple of days this week. My 90 year old mum has been a bit poorly and so I made a rush 2 day visit up to Lincolnshire on "blogging day".
It gave me a chance to do a couple of runs up there in the fens, including a 10 miler on wednesday morning out along one of the river banks onto what is called Spalding Marsh. Dead flat of course, but it was windy and there is no shelter - none at all, not even a tree. As a result when I returned home my chest and stomach were slightly "wind-burnt" despite the faithful Helly Hansen Lifa Vest protection.
I never did much running up in my home town as I only started running when I worked in the city and lived in East London. There are some really good routes around Spalding, including many gun-barrel straight lanes (or droves) as we fenmen call them. On a long run, they can be monotonous but are undoubtedly good for the rhythm. The traffic is not exactly heavy either and you can literally see for miles in all directions. It certainly is the "big sky" area of the UK and is in marked contrast to the over-crowded south east.

A week before this I had run my longest run of this "training phase" so far, a near 15 mile run along the Grand Union Canal towpath between Ivinghoe, Marsworth and Tring.

My two running mates, Trev & Paul, and I ran the entire 145 mile length of the towpath, from Birmingham to London, several years ago. We have a formula for these sort of challenges - a succession of winter sundays; two cars - one left at each end of the day's leg; a flask of coffee, bananas and fig rolls left in the car at the finish. I rememeber we had a lot of fun, saw the middle of the country in a totally different light and hurdled literally thousands of fishing rods. The latest Sport England survey indicates that there are 1.8 million runners and joggers in England and less than 300,000 anglers. On the Grand Union Canal in the midlands each sunday morning these statistics look absurd - we met very, very few runners and caused anxiety to countless anglers, hyper-protective of their roach poles worth hundreds of pounds. You tend to come across them in packs and Trev coined a descriptive collective noun for groups of coarse anglers based on their attitude to the approach of a trio of runners - a "Twat" of anglers.
Thankfully my run last wednesday was virtually "twatless" and I was able to develop a pleasing rhythm, broken only by the short inclines of the locks, and a midpoint change of drink. I also recovered well from this run and on friday did my regular hilly trail run in Wendover Woods with no ill effects. I'm getting fitter.
Unfortunately, and almost unbelievably, I'm also getting fatter! My trip to hospital in early October caused the sharp loss of about 3 kg in weight - well it's grown back! I'm back to touching 86 kgs and would like this to go again before I toe the line in Seville in February. Christmas will make this hard but I now plan to up my mileage to 50 per week pretty quickly.
I'm running in the Bedford Half Marathon tomorrow and hope to lower my Nottingham time of 1:50 by about 2 minutes unless the predicted bad weather destroys all hope of a fast time and then the father-son challenge will be renewed in the Langdale Valley next sunday. Today is therefore a rest day after a good 7.5 miles in the hills yesterday. With a 17 miler scheduled for wednesday, I have a hard 10 days or so ahead. Let's hope I am as ready for it as I feel!