Having had a couple of shockers at Brighton and London, I really wanted a decent run at Shakespeare. It wasn't a target race, but was my last long run before Stockholm in 3 weeks and important for my confidence, as even an attempted 20 miles last weekend ended up with me crawling home totally wiped out and very demoralised. It wasn't going to be easy, even at 9:00 minute miles, as I'd done some really tough training sessions during the week: a hilly off road 10k in 7:40s on Monday, 7.5 miles of 6 x 4-minute intervals on Tuesday, 11 miles at target marathon pace on Thursday, and an "easy" 5 miles on Saturday, that became 7 miles at 8:30s. I was rather tired.
The plan was to set off very slowly and this was achieved thanks to the many many thoughtful people who had placed themselves right up the front and set off at about 11 or 12 m/m pace. Our fault for getting to the start so late but my determination to be totally relaxed meant I was so laid back we almost missed it, particularly because it wasn't where we thought it was. Mark had forgotten his chip and had to run back to the car too. No stress here! After a few miles of jostling and tripping over people it got fractionally clearer but there were still dozens of people with earphones. They seemed keen on running about 4 yards out from the kerb when we met the main road too. Time penalties for all of them.
I wasn't paying much attention to my garmin this time and was keeping myself slow by chatting to people, there were loads of 100 Clubbers out, a few Fetchies including one (apologies, I didn't catch your name) who was pacing a mate to a 1:50 half. Poor mate was blowing out of his arse by 3 miles and down on his target already, I hope he didn't suffer too much, but suspect he did. I spent the hillier mile chatting to 10 in 10 Chris, and blame him fair and square for my slowest mile of the race Nah, not really, it was a slow mile the second time round (though not quite as slow!).
The Greenway was fine on the first lap, the rain had taken most of the dust out of it and it was still reasonably cool and still. It got a lot sunnier and claggier on the second lap, with a wind coming in from the side, rather vexing as it ought to have been behind us after being in our faces on the way out. The second lap had gone really well, legs were feeling pretty comfortable and the inclines manageable, and I was feeling positive. The Greenway is rather a test as it's long and straight and goes from about 20 to about 25 miles so you know this is where things can go a bit wrong. Luckily I was feeling fine, and knew I only needed 10 min/miles for a sub 4. I wanted to push the last few miles if I could but wasn't getting much acceleration (only the last mile was an 8:12) but was still passing loads of people, only one took me back in the last 6 miles, so that was a nice confidence boost.
Having worked through the last few miles, sub 3:50 was possible and I finished in 3:48:34, faster than either of Brighton and London, and a negative split of 1-2 minutes. Very very pleasing. I'm not sure how on earth I'm going to run almost 20 minutes quicker than that in 3 weeks' time, especially given the state of glutes afterwards (they really really hurt ) but it was a good training week. Intervals tomorrow
PS. This is the sort of freaky leg thing that happens when you do too much running. No, I don't have metal struts in my legs.
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