11 weeks left, 62 miles and a slightly excessive post run snack

Anyone who spends more than a few minutes in conversation with me probably picks up on that I’m an “all in” sort of character and don’t tend to do things half-heartedly. This weeks running has served as an allegory for that mindset.

The plan for this week was to reach 60 miles again and ensure I did 20 miles on back to back days. Since I had struggled to manage the back to back sessions last week, it was always going to be on my mind how I would fare repeating that effort this week.

Instead of doing the 7.5 mile route mid-week, I did the 5.4 mile loop on Tuesday-Thursday evenings with an extra lap of the 5.4 miler on Wednesday am. These were all quite settled and I didn’t feel like I was stretching myself even though Tuesday’s and Thursday’s were at a faster pace than usual.

I am quite certain if I didn’t have my next race in February, I would have stayed in the gym for all of my running on Saturday and remained dry. Since I know there is a chance of torrential rain during the 12hrs I’ll be running round Castle Ward, it would have been a lot like cheating myself to remain indoors on account of the weather being a bit shit beforehand.

I did 12.5 miles on the treadmill and then the other 7.5 outdoors immediately afterwards as my 20 miles for that day. The weather was amusingly abysmal throughout that 7.5 miles and I continued my theme of running through puddles rather than around/over them. There is always too much of a risk from cars and/or looking like Mary Poppins to consider either of the other possibilities. One of them was at least ankle deep and I was impressed with how much water my tights, socks and shoes could hold.

I finished the week with 2 of the 5.4 mile loops in substantially better weather this morning and a 9.3 mile run with Paddy this evening. The latter of these efforts was the first time I had needed to use my head torch since Skiddaw and it was very useful for a 300-400m stretch that would have been total darkness otherwise. Also it ensured I had to keep up with Paddy up until that point in the run so we could both benefit from the illumination.

Similar to a few weeks back with the fruit pies and hot drinks we enjoyed after a run in bad weather, we had a post run treat of a Waitrose wrap and drink each. Paddy had bought me a 2nd drink also which slightly dwarfed the other one. Overall I could have done far worse for a post run snack