Back on it with longer runs – w.e 23/11/2014

Winter’s certainly drawing in now and there’s little scope to get out early or late without it being pitch black but I need to get back onto the weekly long runs now.

I managed to get out and do a 16.5 mile run around a local loop as a bit of a recce for a potential loop to work that would be about 20 miles and while it was a nice enough diversion on trails I do run from time to time, it didn’t quite work out that it would be long enough and to be honest, to get my long runs done I’m going to be going back to 4:45am wake up calls on a Wednesday and running nearly 3 hours on uneven, boggy and pitch black moorland isn’t quite the fun adventure I thought it might be.

Since one of my original plans for 2015 was to run the Rome Marathon in March and target a sub 3 hour time, I think I’m going to take the difficulty out of the long runs and do them on the roads and work on getting that marathon pace down despite me now not doing Rome I don’t see much harm in being in sub 3 hour shape by spring time if at all possible.

The Grizzly is at the start of March and 20 tough clifftop trail miles will be a great test as it was last year but I’m confident I can take a good chunk of time off last years 2:56.

Other than that, I’m continuing enjoying running by feel and adding in a little pace work trying to bag Strava segments is helping develop a little bit of a kick if needed. A 4:40/mile pace downhill segment helped boost the confidence in the legs a little!

Not really looking forward to the long road runs over the winter but I think it makes more sense than running in the pitch black.

It was great going to Barnsley to support Ally running the Barnsley 10k – her first race in a long time since getting back to running after a really horrible year of niggling injury and to run a 54 minute race for a new PB was brilliant!

  • Monday – 6.5 miles
  • Tuesday – 5.7 miles
  • Wednesday – Rest
  • Thursday – 5.1 miles
  • Friday – 16.5 miles
  • Saturday – Rest
  • Sunday – Rest

Total: 33.8 miles, 3,186ft elevation