23 weeks, 62 miles and my first midweek 3 a day

This week was great in terms of both being able to fit in an extra rest day to usual (3) and building my weekly long run back up above 30 miles.

I started the week with two laps of 5.4 miles on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. These were quite pleasant considering the time of day and I enjoyed listening to the Pardon The Interruption podcast both mornings. On Thursday morning I went running with my friend Paddy and we skated around some black ice to manage our 6.4 mile loop in around an hour. This was the first time in ages where it was virtually daylight at the end of one of our runs.

After work I managed 2 runs of 7.2 miles with about a half hour break in between. I had taken my running backpack out with me and use the 2x350ml bottles to hold some alcohol free Budweiser and had some Kirkstall Brewery Dissolution IPA in the 2L main bladder (it wasn’t full!), this was stronger than I’d drank on Beer Ultra last year at 6% ABV. The purpose of this was to replicate the bloated feeling on a longer training run for hopefully preparing to do the event again this year. I did enjoy the initial head rush from switching off the alcohol free stuff!

Having the next 2 days off from running was helpful for the minimum of 30 miles I had planned for today. I had started at 6am aiming to do 15 laps around the outside of Wythenshawe Park in Manchester which was very different to what I had expected. Normally I find the first 20-25 miles OK then struggle through the last bit. Apart from a couple of horror miles between 10 and 20 miles, the other 28 were fine and I was pleased to increase my speed slightly for the last 4 miles to get under 6 hours for 31.2 miles.

I had revisited the Maya Angelou “Still I rise” poem this week and found a good video where an American women’s rugby player had made a good tribute to it. The overcoming of obstacles elements of it translate brilliantly to ultra running. Especially the 4th stanza. I have included the unabridged version below