Redemption

I slept like a log last night... a whole 10 hours without waking up once. The weather forecast for the day was not good with strong wind and rain forecast. I just couldn't bear the thought of going out in it again and so decided I'd go for a treadmill run with the intention of lasting 4 hours at an easy pace with 3:30 mins run and 3 mins walk. I wanted to get to 20 miles and I didn't want to slow up in the final hour. I was a bit worried I'd get bored but I was more worried at the prospect of having a depressing run because of the forecasted wind and rain (which is all I seem to run in lately). So, all in all, today it seemed an easy decision.

I got a little sidelined watching Jenny Jones win Bronze in the snowboarding, but after that I got my collection of water bottles together, 2 emergency gels and my good playlist on my iPod (which I had barely listened to on the run from Hell at Centre Parcs).

The first hour was good. I am building my running parts up in relation to the walking, but I'm only putting it up 30 seconds per week so hopefully my body doesn't notice the change. The second hour was also good, but I took the emergency gel at 2.5 hours and another one at 3.5 hours. The last half an hour was a bit more tiring, but as I came closer to the 4 hour deadline, I realised that if I speeded up to a sub 9mm for the last couple of minutes I would get to 21 miles. So that's what I did. I was quite pleased with myself, and this is the fastest I've done 21 miles on a run/walk before, so I feel like I have redeemed my poor effort from Friday night.

When I was finished, I noticed that not one single part of my body was aching or tired at all, so that's really great. I've always had issues with calf pain, but since calf raises have been put into my weekly training programme this hasn't been a problem yet. I am now doing a calf raise session with 60KG... something I thought my foot would never allow me to do.

So, I've had lots of vegetables at my mams (she makes me my Sunday dinner and I wander over there after I've done my training) but I'm starving again. That's the best thing about long runs... You can eat a meal an hour after you've eaten the last one and you feel perfectly justified in doing so!