30 weeks left, 64 miles and several character building efforts

This week was a big step towards building my mileage nearer to 70 per week for the Great Glen Ultra next year. I had envisioned managing 50-60 for most of the winter months and struggling to maintain that. Although I didn’t find any of this week’s sessions draining in terms of how I felt the next day, there was an element of difficulty and suffering during several of the outings.

I don’t want this to sound like complaining and certainly appreciate the usefulness of experiencing that in training so it doesn’t seem as bad in races.

I started the week on Wednesday with 2 laps of 7.5 miles, one before and one after work. The ice underfoot was quite challenging in the morning run and I chose to run on frozen grass to the side when I was unsure of the roads. My evening run was occupied listening to a Bad Boy Running Podcast with Sean Conway. This featured him describing swimming in conditions substantially worse. Although it was a bit cold and still frosty, being out for 7.5 miles seemed like nothing compared to what I was listening about!

Thursday morning’s effort was only 5.4 miles. I really struggled to maintain my footing as it was raining and seemingly freezing into surface Ice immediately!

I had a very easy 7.5 mile effort on Friday and followed this up with 4 laps of the same route yesterday. Having done this distance and above 3 times since starting training for the Paris by Night race, it didn’t have the same significance as the first 2 but still contributed most of my mileage for the week.

I finished with a 6.4 mile run with my friend Paddy today. This was at a faster pace than we usually run at and there was minimal ice to contend with. Over the summer when I wasn’t training as much I was posting running quotes on Instagram, the purpose of this was to have a collection I can call upon if needed! Although I still browse through these most weeks, there was one that stuck with me moreso this week