Rob's Running Blog

Longest Run of the Year so far – 12.43 miles in 2 hrs 18 minutes 45 seconds

Weather was looking bit cloudy so ideal conditions for a long slow run. Wasn’t sure how my legs would be as they had felt a bit achey after the recovery run on Tuesday – still, they’d had 2 days to recover from that!

Unlike my long runs in the past, where I felt good and upped the pace, and eventually ended up with injuries, I was determined to keep the pace nice and slow. For the first 3k felt very good, although there was a moment where I started to breathe hard and wondered if I would get anywhere near my target of 10 ish miles. The plan was to run just over 10 to take me into 20 miles for the week.

There was a bit of a breeze, and a little drizzle helped me keep cool although it was mainly dry and towards the end of the run there was a nice red sky. I ran out through Dane Bank, then Reddish, then all the way to the edge of Stockport until I came to a sort of dead end of dual carriageway, and turned back, opting for the route via Belle Vue and back to base through Gorton. Barely got out of breath although my knees were a bit sore at times, and I was sweating quite a lot – at about 12k I popped into a shop for some energy drink, which only lost me about a minute, but I needed to refuel, and it did me good. Kept plodding along at a nice steady pace, felt I could keep going all night really, and 10 miles ticked over while I was still a ways off the motorway bridge at Denton Rock.

Took it slow over the bridge, and started to calculate what I would end up running, figured I would easily make 11 miles and when that ticked over realised I only needed to run another 1.6km to make it 12. My pace was slowing and feet were a bit sore, but just kept going at an easy pace, and when I got to 19.4k I figure I couldn’t quite trust my own maths, so I thought to make it 19.8k and by then I just decided to jog another 200metres to make it a nice round 20km, or 12.43 miles. I could have carried on and made it a half marathon, but time was getting on, and I had already exceeded my planned distance, and was near my front door, so I petered to a stop, took a well deserved slug from what was left of the powerade, and got inside to cool off!

21.8 miles for the week, with a nice mix of runs, have a little time away now so will be having 4 days off running with some hiking instead, but I feel in really good shape. Probably my last really long run before the Salford 10k race in September, hopefully this time I have got the preparation right, and will be able to do myself justice.

Might try a 5k time trial next week, just to see where my pace is at!