A nice varied week with a Friday night trail race followed by parkrun then a 23 mile long run was a good mix up.
I despise running in the evening so the Woodland Challenge was going to be a challenge and my stomach wasn’t looking forward to it despite me being careful with eating and coffee on days I know I’ve got an evening race. Glad there wasn’t a big queue for the toilets at the start that’s for sure.
Probably a little nervous as it was a club championship race and my only real goal was to see how close I could get to our club captain in the 6.5 mile trail race.
With his speed and vast experience over this sort of distance I hoped I could hang on for a few miles at least but in the end it was only about half a mile from the start before I felt there wasn’t any point working so hard to keep up with someone out of my league.
I carried on at a decent pace and went through the first 3 miles in a decent 18:00 but the second half of the course is significantly harder with more climbing and technical trail and I flagged badly in the heat. Slowing to a crawl and dropping from 6th to 10th in the last mile and a bit.
Still, a nice event well organised by Stadium Runners and with Felix enjoying the fun run it was a nice change for a Friday night.
Saturday I ended up doing Huddersfield parkrun despite still feeling surprisingly battered by the night before. Ally was initially going to do it but didn’t so I figured I’d go around at a steadier effort than normal – particularly the first mile which at Huddersfield tends to be very fast because there’s so many people you have to get clear but ultimately I ran 17:35 for 4th finisher which felt good.
With Hardmoors 60 not that far away, I’m also very aware the last long run (20+ miles) I actually did was London marathon in April so I need to get a few in. I’m planning on a loop of the White Rose Ultra route in early august but will be looking to get some 20-25 milers done in the meantime.
Sunday was a free morning so I went out on a bigger local loop ending up around 23 miles and just shy of 3,000ft of ascent. Felt knackering even at an easy pace but to be fair, with 2 full effort runs in 36 hours before not that shocking. Good run but much to ponder for Hardmoors.
Apart from that, I’ve actually mostly kept up with my 30 days of core exercise and now have a reasonably solid evening routine that takes about 30 minutes and is doable anywhere and I can definitely feel it working. Looking forward to keeping it going for another 5-6 weeks to see where I’m at physically with the extra work.
With the long run, I actually ended the week over 70 miles which I’d not really planned on but it felt alright.
- Monday – 11.6 miles
- Tuesday – 5.2 miles
- Wednesday – 11 miles
- Thursday – 7.6 miles
- Friday – 11.1 miles (4.6 & 6.5 miles – Woodland Challenge race)
- Saturday – 3.1 miles
- Sunday – 23 miles
Total: 72.7 miles, 6,588ft elevation