13 mile mission accomplished. But it wasn’t easy.
This was a strange run. Last week’s long run up-hill and down-dale, complete with heavy rain and throbbing blisters, was much harder than this but today’s was a different type of ‘hard’. Today the weather was mild and dry. So mild indeed that for the first time in this current outbreak of unfamiliar clean-living, I ran without a tracksuit top, and instead gave the watching public a flash of my new Hal Higdon singlet.
So it was mild, and the route was totally flat. And yet it was still hard. My legs felt heavy and unresponsive from the start. There was no period during this run when I felt myself to be in cruise-control mode. At no point did I feel that I was really enjoying myself. Every step was a struggle today.
Why was this? Perhaps the last 3 days of exercise-biking were not great preparation. Perhaps I should have taken a complete day’s rest yesterday. Perhaps my legs would have been less leaden. One lives and learns. Every week tells me something new. Perhaps I saw today the consequence of over-training.
Last Sunday’s lesson was that if a plaster does not stay in situ, it will create a blister worse than the semi-healed one it is trying to cover. So today I just coated my feet in Vaseline and I had no problem.
I should be happy this evening but I feel strangely subdued. Come on mate, look on the bright side. Today I ran my longest-ever distance; exactly half the marathon. (Ha ha! That was supposed to cheer me up! You mean I have to run that distance TWICE – on the same day?)
In fact there are many positives to take from today. I did the distance without injury. Yes it was tough — very tough — but I battled through it when my worst instincts were tugging me in the other direction. And while I take no real interest in time (and won’t do until the start of March, if at all), I couldn’t help noticing that today I did the distance in 2 hours 32 minutes, which comes out at 11:43 per mile, which means that I’m running progressively faster. At the beginning of this training programme I was managing around 13 minutes per mile.
I just said to my wife (who’s just got home after being away for the weekend): "Guess what? I ran thirteen miles today."
"Yes I know, you already told me"
"I know I told you. But… I just wanted to tell you again…"
