35 weeks, 50 miles and a new midweek audio companion

I started this week with a 6.4 mile run on Tuesday morning with my friend Paddy. Normally my first outing of the week is a slow recovery run but I was able to maintain parts of this at a faster pace than if I was running alone.

The rest of the week was mostly loops of the 7.5 mile route near my house. I managed to do this on Thursday morning, a morning lap and then an evening lap on Friday and two laps starting at 4am today. I also added another 6.4 mile run with Paddy to this morning’s run to keep my long training run for each week above 20 miles. I am hopeful this can build up to 36-38 miles as a long training run before the Great Glen Ultra but will settle for this for the time being.

My new audio companion was a podcast that airs every weekday evening around American sport called PTI (Pardon The Interruption). This is hyperbolic panel discussion about NBA (Basketball), NFL (American Football) and college sports. Whilst I do occasionally enjoy listening to music when running, the more active listening needed to relate the conversation to my knowledge of the sports did help distract from the tougher parts of my sessions this week (Thursday morning was particularly difficult to get any momentum during!). I found some of the enthusiastic comments and opinions amusing. One that stood out was around a Seattle NFL player leaving the field for a head injury assessment following a collision and only missing one play as a result. Apparently he was only in the assessment tent for a matter of seconds. The PTI panellist likened this to Clark Kent going into the tent and Superman coming out!

For my main source of motivation this week, I have used a quote from Kristin Armstrong. She is an American professional cyclist (not to be confused with Lance Armstrong’s ex wife).

I love the last line of this. So much of what my training involves is mentally preparing for race day and convincing myself it will go OK. The Paris By Night race will be my first overnight endeavour so hopefully having all of these early starts will mean there is an element of overriding my concerns about running at nocturnal times and boost my chances of finishing.