Six months…

Sunday 13th November

In six months time I will be running 50 miles. Help me.

Sunday was the second Striders marathon training run of the season, the Coulsdon 11 that was actually 12… 8:15am on a Sunday morning about 20 runners gathered at East Croydon, jumped on a train to Coulsdon Town & ran back to Croydon through Farthing Downs & the Happy Valley.

12 miles, 2:07:25, 10:37 min/mile, 1,000 ft elevation (good practice for the North Downs!) & mostly off-road.

Beautiful run & I LOVED running with the group. I opted to run with group three as I really need to try & run my long runs slower & I whilst I would have keep up with group two I needed to look at the bigger picture. The pace I have in mind at the moment for NDW is 12 min miles so there is no point doing the long runs at 9 minute miles.

And anyway, the slower pace of group three meant I could have a nice little chat as I ran!

This run took me to over 3,000ft of elevation gain in seven days. My butt muscles were most definitely feeling it by about mile five and were screaming at me to find somewhere flat to run… All good practice (I say through gritted teeth…)

Running errands round London…

I don’t usually run the day after a long run but I’d been really good with stretching & foam rolling & my legs felt good so I decided to literally run my errands round London…

Bus to Vauxhall (I was taking a camera into my supplier for repair & didn’t fancy running with £5,000 of gear on my back…), quick meeting, onto Victoria, took a detour via Buckingham Palace, got caught in a gun salute to mark the Prince of Wales birthday in Green Park, Regent Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden, down to the Thames Path & back to London Bridge. By FAR the quickest way to get to all the places I needed to go and MUCH more fun that the tube!

A completely different run to Sundays but equally as enjoyable.

Club run Wednesday

With a race at the weekend I opted to take it easy & ran with the third group. Having run with the seconds for the past month I really noticed a difference in pace.

7.2miles, 1:07:32, 9:19 min/mile, 540ft elevation gain

Robin, the club chairman led the group. He’s 70. If I am still running at 70 I will be happy, never mind leading an hour long group run at 9:15 minute mile pace!

Impromptu run commute Thursday

London Bridge to Vauxhall, bang on three miles, X minute run compared to 35+ on public transport.

I was running into a massive headwind & it rained, but so what. I wasn’t stuck in a tin can underground…

3.0 miles, 25:47, 8:27 min/mile, not worth mentioning the elevation…

And there is week one.

27.2 miles for the week, approx. 1,600 ft elevation gain.

25 weeks to go.