Long Sunday run

The bible said: "Thou shalt run for 1 hour at a steady pace and then thou shalt speed up a little to marathon pace before slowing down again to run for a total of 1hour 40 minutes". James did as God did command and he saw that this was good.

Well, in actual fact, it didn't feel quite as good as the above would have you believe. I ran the first loop of the usual Sunday course with Nick and Philippe. Nick was complaining of having nothing left in his legs (all down to the beer I think, but don't tell Anne as it was a bone of contention between them already when we met up first thing) and Philippe was champing at the bit, asking what pace we were running at. I just took it comfortably for the first lap going around the course at a 4:40 pace on average. We sped up a little towards the end, to keep Philippe happy mainly, but it was a pleasant run, if a little cold when the wind picked up in places.

The second lap, I was supposed to put in the famous marathon pace effort for 3 kilometres. I set off after 14 kilometres and then managed to push the pace to 4:07, 4:14 and 4:11 for the next 3. My target marathon pace is 4:16 in order to achieve a 3 hour marathon, but I'm aiming at 4:10 pace just to maintain a small safety margin. Those 3 kilometres today were hard to achieve and I fully appreciated the effort that will be involved on race day. The following 2 were managed in 5:04 and 4:50 as I recovered and then I was back down to 4:35 where I feel comfortable.

All up 24 km in 1:52 so an average of around 4:42. I was pleased and it ends a good week of training where I have managed to cover 84 kilometres. I am convinced that the objective is achievable and that the training programme is appropriate. Time will tell.