34 weeks, 70 miles and a reminder of the small margins between winning and losing

I took Monday and Tuesday off this week then ran twice a day on Wednesday and Thursday, doing a 7.5 mile lap each time. These were all quite steady and the weather was noticeably warmer than last week. I continued with 2 more 7.5 mile laps on Friday and a 10.5 mile run with my brother Ben on Saturday morning.

I watched England lose to Wales yesterday evening in the 6 Nations Rugby which was definitely the ‘highlight’ of my week. This was a really attritional battle. As good as England had looked in their first 2 games of the tournament, they were largely nullified in the second half and couldn’t counter Wales’ tactics for controlling possession and territory.

There is a school of thought that most people use their social media accounts to create ‘echo chambers’ where they can only read and listen to things from people who think like them and have similar opinions. Usually I’d agree this applies to me too but based on yesterday, I am friends with far too many Welsh runners who had obviously enjoyed England’s second half demise.

I finished my running for this week with 2 laps of 7.5 miles with my friend Tom. This was quite steady again and I was conscious of this being his longest run so far in his marathon training.

I am pleased to have barely maintained my 70+ mile weekly average for February and looking forward to trying to gradually increase this over the next few months. I am very aware of the small margins for error that a 100 mile race involves and hopefully if I can get up to 80/90 miles per week at the peak of my training I can reduce the amount of critical decisions I have to make on race day.