38 weeks, 59 miles and my first run in 12 years with an old friend

I really enjoyed my running this week. I intentionally did less midweek running and was certain in my plans to finish with a minimum of 20 miles today. I did 3 laps of 5.4 miles on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday then an further 7 mile run with my brother Ben on Thursday evening. This was quite a bit faster than my usual running and we were able to hold a conversation at about 8:30 mile pace which I was happy with.

I then did 2 laps of 7.5 miles on Friday which were relatively comfortable. I enjoyed listening to podcasts and could settle into my usual pace quite easily.

I finished the week with 4 laps of the 5.4 mile route today, I had a bit of difficulty with my hands going numb from the cold on lap 1 but this disappeared by half way through the 2nd lap. My friend Tom joined me for my last 2 laps which was a great boost for me. I’ve known him since we were both 10 years old but we’ve sort of lost touch over the last few years. We both played junior rugby league together then went off to study Maths at different universities, he continued on to further study and career progression relevant to his degree and I, didn’t!

One of the nice things about running with people is conversation isn’t forced and often the most trivial topics are more enjoyable to have stunted dialogues about. We discussed rugby and races we were doing/nutrition strategies we were trying out. I think he had underestimated Churwell Hill slightly but was able to persevere to the top of it on both laps. Apart from him being overly polite to complete strangers for moving out of our way, it was great to have the company for that part of my run.

I am pleased that my average has stayed over 50 miles per week for this month considering Paris By Night will have taken some toll on the rest of my training. I am hoping to do something in the next few weeks as a long training run of around 35-40 miles, which should be a good progression before I have to look at doing long back to back running on consecutive days. Although this week hasn’t involved any overly difficult training, I am glad I’ve shown some enthusiasm for each session and felt its building towards another big effort in the next few weeks. I will find out how my training is going far more once that is done.