Hilly running

I was meant to run 20 miles at the weekend but due to a dicky tummy I ended up doing 2 much shorter runs on each day; one a tempo effort for 45 minutes while the other was a slow, one hour plod. By Monday evening I felt a lot better so I left work and set out to do a route the Simon had shown me. My reason for picking it was twofold; firstly, it was a lot more pretty than my usual route, taking in Leatherhead, Fetcham, Bookham, Bocketts Farm, Nork and a few other places, all linked by trail paths. The other reason was that it was a considerably more hilly route than I was used to and I was hoping that this varied terrain would engage other muscles and maybe help to alleviate the battered feeling in my quads that I had during my last long run.

Once again, I started really slowly. Unfortunately, my heart rate monitor was playing silly beggers so I had to go by feel but it was very comfortable. The long climbs and descents were taken really steadily and I felt pretty strong and as I came onto the A24 for the last time at approximately 13 miles I began to push on above marathon pace. The gels at 90 and 120 minutes really helped again and I feel that a couple more in the race will help a lot. I did get tired and I could feel my heart rate increasing considerably but I felt a lot stronger than the last long run. It was hurting at the end, but I think I am starting to win the mental game and I pushed on, focusing on keeping a good leg turnover.

20 miles in 2.44, with a comfortable negative split. Not too bad, but over the next three weeks I am going to have to do some long marathon pace efforts in order to see what pace I should aim for. I'll be looking at doing 13-14 miles at 3.15 pace, take my HR data and see whether it looks sustainable, but at the moment my feeling is to be more conservative when it actually comes to the race. I still have 6 weeks.