Whoops!

I got home from work today and cooked some chicken broth ready for tea. I've been really good with food since last week, when I decided to eat low GI foods so I was getting the best nutrition before the marathon. I have carried that on, finding out that I lost 2lb in the week and I feel so much better in myself. It doesn't take me long to get used to a change in diet...probably only a week, so I'm carrying on. My ideal running weight is between 8st 12 and 9st 1, so I'm aiming to be in that sort of shape for Florence. That is now my main focus, with a 10K at the end of September instead of the Paras 10 and then GER on the 10th of October as a warm up race. They are all flat, all prone to a "bit" of wind (not gale force like Fleetwood), and will hopefully be a good build up so I'm at my best for the Florence marathon. I've had a good read on peoples blogs, forums etc about Florence and apparently there are a few cobbles towards the end of the run to deal with, a boring run through a park between 32 and 38K, but the rest of it is fabulous. There are drinks stations every 5K with water, lemon tea, isotonic drinks, electrolyte tablets and PASTRIES!!!! OMG, would I fancy a danish at the 20th mile... I think not somehow, but how fabulous!

So, already I'm feeling extremely positive. Yesterday I had that "larger lungs" feeling after the hard work at Fleetwood. I love that feeling, where all of a sudden you feel like you can take in much more oxygen than usual. That hasn't happened to me for such a long time...maybe a year or so. I feel like I've had a mini breakthrough. When I first started running, I used to get this feeling every 6 or 7 weeks... I was beginning to think I wasn't going to experience that sort of "fitness jump" ever again.

So, I had a tuna sandwich when I came in, and luckily I'm the sort of person who can pretty much eat and go straight out for a run... which is what I did.
Although I had my Garmin on, I decided to just go with what felt comfortable today and not care about the time... after all, it would probably be 12 minute miles after the weekends exertions.
I got back home after a really lovely undulating run and downloaded my run to find to my amazement that I had ran an average of 9.58mm. The "whoops" part came when I looked at my splits and realised I'd ran the first mile in 8.30... whoops because today should have been a recovery run, yay because I've never ran a mile that fast before. See, Fleetwood wasn't a waste of time after all. ;-)

Unfortunately, despite the excellent foot care regime done last week, I find I have two blisters on my big toe and a tiny blister on one of my other toes. I was a bit puzzled by this, (I did exactly the same foot care before West Cumbrian run and my feet were in the best condition after a race they have ever been) until Graeme pointed out that the blisters were probably caused by all of the sand on Sunday... ahhhhh, I hadn't thought about that!