13 weeks remaining, 50.5 miles and a rehashed source of motivation

This was meant to be a reduced mileage week but still ended up with only 1 rest day instead of my preferred 2. I started the week with my usual Tuesday 5.4 mile loop. Perhaps due to my 32 miles over the previous weekend, this was not as pleasant as I have found my early week running recently. Nevertheless I persevered and finished the route with my legs finally loosening up over the last few miles.

I found my 5am start the next morning easier than usual and powered through 7.5 miles at a reasonable pace. The weather was nowhere near as bad as last week and I felt the gloves were a bit overkill so didn’t wear them the next few days.

I only did 3.75 miles on Thursday as I had an earlier start at work somewhere I hadn’t been before and didn’t want to be late. This seemed a lot like cheating myself and was realistically what cost me my 2nd rest day.

On Friday I was back on with the 7.5 mile route and quite enjoyed knowing it would be my last time running in darkness until next week. I really like running quick shorter runs in the dark but get a bit sick of all the artificial light from traffic on longer routes.

It’s a sad state of affairs when your first reduced mileage week in 5 weeks, still involves a 20 mile run! I completed this on the treadmill at the gym on Saturday morning. My legs were OK for the vast majority of it but I struggled to find the same motivation I had been able to use when running longer distances recently.

Around 3 years ago. I used to get Runner’s World quotes emailed daily and although there was a few diamonds in the rough, I found that most of them were quite arrogant and not really advisory. Being the sort of person who doesn’t mind waiting a few days for a decent one to appear, I signed up to recieve them again and was sent this one on Thursday which served as my motivation for the tail end of my run on Saturday.

I finished the week with another 6.4 mile run with Paddy. It is safe to say everything I had managed to dodge for the last 6 days caught up with me on this run. It was the sort of gale force winds you see in cartoons where cats and dogs blow away down the road! The rain was intermittent but quite intense when for most of the run. We had set off at a bit faster pace than usual which helped as we could speed up again when needed to fight against the wind and rain. We were even treated to a bit of hail for a short period of time.

I am pleased to have topped 50 miles again in what was a reduced training week and happy that I could put the sort of effort needed for the 6.4 miles today after doing 20 yesterday morning. Now I’m half way through the 24 week plan, I am optimistic the 2nd half will fall into place like the previous 12 weeks have. Hopefully I’ll be reflecting on my first 60+miles week of 2015 this time next Sunday.