March 2015

[marathondan]

Week 13 of 18

20 miles on road last night, fuelled by jelly babies and 80s party hits. Hard going of course, and today my quads are tenderised, but I managed to finish strongly, covering the last mile in 9:09. On such a crisp, starry night I traded up to ski gloves for the final 5 miles, finally getting home about midnight. The jelly babies worked well; normally in the last half an hour of a long run my thoughts turn to what to have for my recovery snack, but this time there was no craving vast bowls of steaming porridge. Job's a good 'un.

Because of my disturbingly obsessive comprehensive record-keeping, I can check my times for running this exact route over the years:

2009: 3:10
2010: 3:06 (with an extra 1K on the end!)
2011: 3:10
2012: 3:11
2015: 3:13

So all in all, I haven't slowed down that much. Not sure what I was on in 2010; I checked my diary but there's nothing to explain why it was so much faster.

This week: more hard midweek sessions, then at the weekend it's time to break out the ski mask and woolly hat for 14 miles.