36 weeks, 73 miles and my first appearance on a running podcast

This was another good week of progress towards the Autumn 100. After taking Monday off, I managed one lap of 5.4 miles on Tuesday evening before 2 more laps on Wednesday morning. I had arranged to take part in the King of the Hill 10k in Huddersfield and nostalgically underestimated the main last bit of the climb. It is a 5k up and 5k down format and the toughest section is definitely the last 2-300 metres before you turn back. Having listened to a podcast called Running Your Stories recently, I enjoyed the conversational style of it and how it focuses on a wide range of runners with different abilities, I had contacted the host Kevin Robinson about going on after Paris By Night, we had arranged this for after the 10k. He had initially said he was able to run the distance but couldn’t race it as he was still partly recovering from an injury. I had assumed (naively) that this would mean a steady 10-11 minute miles stroll together but he had got caught up in the race environment and shot off ahead of me from the start. Kevin has a very fast cadence but quite a small stride length for his height so I could keep up for a while but then fell behind. I had also forgotten to bring spare batteries for my headtorch so had to run on it’s lowest setting. Luckily I tagged onto another runner for the return leg and shared his light.

I really enjoyed being on the podcast and liked that it was conversational as expected and not like an interview. There was a bit of humour contributed from both of us which helped it along as well.

I continued the week with 2 laps of 7.5 miles on Thursday and another lap of 5.4 miles on Friday. I then did a 10.4 mile trail run with my brother Ben on Saturday morning and enjoyed being able to chat to him about his running training throughout this. I must have got used to running on road too much recently as my traction was shocking and I kept flailing off when my foot would slip on mud or branches.

I finished the week with a rather difficult 10 laps of Wythenshawe Park this morning. It was very challenging to manufacture any enthusiasm at 6am for a training run that was essentially half of my longest effort before Paris By Night two months ago. I like to think I’ve accepted that training towards something as monumental as a 100 mile run, some of the sessions may not feel like they are overly purposeful on their own but they will eventually lead towards me accomplishing the main goal.