14 weeks left, 61.5 miles, a renewed enthusiasm for purposeful practices and an interim goal

This week 100% went the way it had to go! I had followed the plan in terms of gradually increasing mileage for 3 consecutive weeks and then taking a rest week for the previous 10 weeks. Since this was my 3rd week of ascension, anything the under the 56 miles from last week was unacceptable.

I started my training on Wednesday as the 22.5 mile long run last Sunday had taken more out of me than I thought it would. I managed to do 7.5 miles on the treadmill in a little over an hour. I was quite happy with the amount of focus I could sustain on finishing in a reasonable time. I had been reading up over the last fortnight about deliberate or purposeful practice. This is essentially gaining feedback and using this to improve performance. I can relate this to running in terms of aiming to run for a certain distance or get a distance I’m already comfortable doing under a set time. One of my favourite journalists, Matthew Syed has compared a lack of this to “golfing in the dark.” Essentially without the feedback of where the ball went or landed, there would be nothing to evaluate where improvements could be made! I have felt a lot of my training runs recently have been distances I’m confident in doing and not particularly time driven so was trying to move away from that. Contrary to if I was just running as a hobby, I have to see my training as a progression so that in another 10 years I will be able to think of myself as having 20 years experience rather than 1 years experience 20 times!

My Thursday training consisted of 7.5 miles in the morning which was an acceptable pace but nowhere near as exerting as the night before. I then did another 7.5 miles on the treadmill after work that I managed to scrape under an hour for.

I have always prided myself at being good with pain. When I woke up at 5am on Friday morning the top of my right foot was very sore and I couldn’t shake my focus away from it for any part of the 7.5 miles that morning. I had watched the race video from the Last One Standing race in Belfast last weekend and found the fact 2 runners lasted 36 hours covering 150+ miles unfathomable, possibly more impressive was the videographer Guillaume shutting out pain from his knee for 16 hours to join the races’ 100 mile club to cover that distance in 24 hours.. With this in mind, I wasn’t going to let a bit of a sore foot stop me covering a route I’d ran 10 times in a week before.

The 7.5 miles on Friday evening were a doddle in comparison and I found the pain in my foot had gone away.

I finished the week with 24 miles today which consisted of 2 laps of the 7.5 mile loop and then 9 miles with my friend Paddy. l enjoyed having the companionship for the last bit. Even though each of these were tough in parts, I had a more dogged mindset than I have managed to cultivate recently and I used the Invictus poem as an anchor to drag me through the tougher miles.

I am pleased to have got a bit closer to covering 100km over the course of a week.

I have also signed up for doing a race called the “Beer Ultra” in Buxton, Derbyshire on the 18th March. This is a 50km race that will consist of 10 laps following a 5km loop. The “beer” element of the title means that I will have to consume a 330ml bottle of beer after each one. This is a style of running I am totally unfamiliar with but I’m sure there will be moments where I shall and the other runners will be able to find me unafraid!