Week 8 – 42.2 miles 🏃♂️ 4th March – 10th March
Weekly miles increased by 3.5 miles. Monday Club run plus a bit feels hard after running 15 and 5 miles at the weekend. It’s good to see others Strava runs which keeps me focused on getting out on the road, rather than staying in and missing storm Eric! Running into the wind use to be a bug bare of mine. Then I learnt that putting head down restricted my air intake, which means less oxygen in the blood stream and therefore the science bit doesn’t happen and your body doesn’t cope as well. I had to keep telling myself “keep your head up!” Which after a while become a unconscious act and I now feel comfortable running into the wind. As an ex-asthmatic this seems unreal!
Tuesday. Forgetting my bus pass (not a free one…I’m not that old…yet!) gave me an extra 0.5 mile this week as I ran home to get it as I had a an early meeting that day! 🏃♂️
Wednesday is the club social and a talk about the Green Belt Relay. I arrange the weekend run with other Eagles.
Thursday I ran to Ealing Common, to run alongside the common on the South side (dead end road) with Terena and Rob and ran 8x 0.1 mile reps full pelt with a walk back to recover. My first spell of speed work and possibly my last at the rep pace as my back wasn’t happy about it!
Saturday starts at 6 a.m. to have breakfast and I leave home at 7:15 to meet up with Rob. We run 4.5 miles including Greenford hills and we head back to Hanwell to meet Caroline. We run a few miles and Rob detours home as Caroline and I head from Three Bridges along the canal to Brentford, Chiswick and finally reach Hammersmith. There we pick up Kelli and Terena and head back along the river to Dukes Meadows, Kew Bridge and to Gunnersbury Park. Caroline now up to 12 miles runs 2 more in GP before getting her free coffee, food etc and the three of us head to Lammas until I hit 19.3 miles. Having such a great group of people to run with made this my best ever long run. I finished and felt good, legs felt like I could have continued and I had no thoughts of “when will this be over!” Sunday I run a short circuit to get the lactic acid moving. ☺
Week 9 – 29.9 miles 🏃♂️ 11th March – 17th March
This week will be a drop in mileage due to the great news we have a Vets team entered into ‘Welsh Castles Relay’ which means I need to try and run a good time at the Fleet Half Marathon on Sunday to attempt to get my name on the coach!
9 miles on Monday and 7.5 on Thursday all at marathon pace to try and keep a faster pace in my legs for Sunday. It’s going to be a tough run but I’m hoping for 1:45-1:47 and then I can focus once more on my training plan. Its been a very stressful and long week so I’m looking forward to Sundays half.
Sunday is Fleet half. A bright sunny morning and near perfect running conditions. I start off at 1:45 pace and find the course very undulating! I run quickly down the hills and after 5 miles I’ve made up a couple of minutes and join the back of the 1:40 pacer crew. I held my pace and finish in a surprising 1:38:53. Also, I bump into Susie Chan, Endurance runner and steal a selfie!
A good week, and now long weekend runs to look forward to over the next couple of weeks. Angela’s three park runs 20 miler being the first!
David Carlin 🏃♂️🍊🦅