I woke up Sunday morning with a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. Today was the day I had to run for 1 hour 50 minutes.
I got up at around 10am, made a healthy brekkie for hubby and my lovely friend Fi who had stayed for the weekend. We had lots of fruit with 0% greek yoghurt and honey, followed by some toasted Spelt and Honey bread – it’s one of Asdas speciality breads and I would highly recommend it. I washed it all down with 2 pints of water and a berocca. I’ve read quite a lot in the last week about nutrition for training – lovely friend Fi bought me a great book called Go Faster Food by Kate Percy – signed by the author no less! Anyway, I was aiming for a breakfast with a good mix of carbs (toast and fruit) and protein (yoghurt). I know that I can run on porridge, but I want to try different things each week to see what works best.
An hour after eating I set out. I tried not to think about how far I was going. I had a route planned in my head of around 9 miles which I worked out should take me around 1hr 50 and, to avoid feeling too pressured, I promised myself that if at any point it felt like I couldn’t finish I would just call my husband and come home. I took 500mls of water with with me, wore my most comfy running tights and covered my torso and face in vaseline to prevent chafing and wind burn. I know that all sounds a bit extreme but I felt like I was heading out for a marathon and wanted to be prepared. I can laugh about it now but at the time I just felt like I wanted to make sure I had no reason to stop.
I laced up my trainers, made sure that I had downloaded the 1st 2 episodes of Marathon Talk, and off I went. For the 1st 2 miles I had a bubbly stomach and learnt Lesson No 1: Do NOT eat fruit before a long run. It resulted in a bit of er wind power that got me though mile 3 where I hit 12m12s pace. Mile 4 was hard – a long slightly upward run to the halfway point, thankfully by that point I was up to the bit in episode 1 of MT where they interviewed Liz Yelling and I was lost in that, however I learnt Lesson No 2: Plan routes with plenty of change of scenery so I don’t get bored. Mile 5 and 6 were nondescript, the end of mile 7 and half of 8 was a very steep uphill which I walked up as a bit of a rest but also because it is almost vertical and I have a LONG way to go before I can run up it. I also passed a woman walking who I had passed and said Hi to at mile 3. She smiled at me and we stopped and had a little chat – she thought I was nuts to be going up the hill and not down it! I explained what I was doing, that I was using it as my 2/3rds way through ‘rest’ and she asked if I was training for the marathon! Hahahaha!! Lesson No 3: It’s okay to stop and chat to people to break up the run. I waved goodbye to my new friend (I hope I see her again next week) and headed home – the last 2 miles were nice and flat and I felt fantastic…I ran the last mile in 10m51!! I was tempted to go for another mile to prove to myself that I can do it, but I’ll save that for next week.
My total time was 1hr 50m 30s and I covered 9.03m. Splits were as follows, although runkeeper lost signal quite a few times so I’m not convinced it’s accurate:
Mile 1: 12:49
Mile 2: 12:25
Mile 3: 12:12
Mile 4: 12:43
Mile 5: 11:51
Mile 6: 10:13
Mile 7: 14:35
Mile 8: 13:03
Mile 9: 10:51
I’m quite pleased with the splits – it doesn’t look too inconsistent and hopefully with some tempo work and a bit of weight loss, I might get to under a 12 minute mile average.
Within about 5 minutes of pressing save activity on my iphone (which auto posts it to facebook) I had text and FB messages from friends (thanks Rachel and Susan) and family congratulating me. I felt quite emotional and sent a text to Shaz who sent me a lovely supportive whoop-whoop by text! Hubby gave me a big high 5 and both my cats came to wind themselves round my legs – I like to think they were saying well done and attempting to massage me however I think they may have been after Dreamies…
I followed up yesterdays run with a short club run today. My legs started feeling heavy about a mile in and it was POURING down so I did 3 instead of 5 miles (naughty me I went off plan!). Tempo run next on the list for tomorrow or Wednesday – MY FIRST EVER ONE!! I’ll let you know how it goes.
Excellent, excellent, excellent!
What an amazing achievement, that’s brilliant!
Always worth being prepared, I can make up the most wondrous excuses to stop.
Oh well done m’dear. Knew you could do it and sounds like you ran really well *and* learnt a lot. Good preparation as well. I’ve been trying out new pre-long-run foods recently and have found I need to eat two hours before going out running, otherwise I get a stitch and start feeling a bit queezy.
So many lessons learnt, dont blame you for cutting monday nights runs short, your earnt that right big time.
Awesome! Just awesome! x
Absolutely fantastically fab!! Well done! You did everything right… including cutting your run short the next day… a lesson I learnt the hard way! Good luck with your tempo run… I find a bit of the right type of music helps me on the way with that! 🙂
I don’t know how you remember what it was like mile by mile… Well done on an interesting and well executed run and blog!
Oh… And as I have just been winding my daughter, I smiled at the thought of your cats winding themselves around your legs!
Excellent run. Running for the best part ot two hours and not giving into excuses is absolutely awesome.
Great post and run, well done! I’ve found it definitely works better for me too to try and plan a more interesting route for the longer runs as otherwise they can seem soooo boring and feel like they take forever! 🙂