3 Months til London

I’m now counting down the days til the marathons start!  It’s 3 months today for London, which means less than that for Brighton!  Training seems to be going fine, and I’m just getting back into the long runs (I count a long marathon-training run as anything over a half marathon).  So on Saturday I managed 14 miles.  The plan was to run 5.5 miles to parkrun, then do the parkrun, and finally run home the same way.  So early start first thing Saturday as I had to be out early enough to get to the park for 9am, but not be too early so I would have to stop and hang about.

It was a cold day, so I opted for long sleeves which I rarely do unless it’s hovering around 0 degrees!  Plus my hydration pack which carries a few essentials.  It was a nice morning for a run, crisp and clear.  I knew the parkrun was going to be the off road course – but the run there would be mostly on tarmac paths - so I was in a bit of a dilemma about whether to wear, trail shoes or road?  In the end I opted for trail and would run on the grass verges where possible.  Plus there was a good chance the Alban Way which leads to parkrun would be covered with leaves and mud anyway.

First part of the run all went fine, think my body struggled for the first 10 minutes or so, but then I reminded myself never to judge a run by its first mile!  It always feels hard before you get going and your body just wants to go back to bed!  Once I was up past the first hill and seeing other runners around I felt much better.  But I got to parkrun 15 minutes early and wasn’t sure what to do – I didn’t want to stop as then it would break up then run, but if I carried on running I would mess up the distances and maybe even get back to the start line too late!  In the end I decided to do a few laps of the field and a bit up near the woods where a lot of parkrunners were warming up.  It added over half a mile to the garmin so I would just carry on running until 14 miles then walk/jog the last bit home.

Parkrun was good fun, very busy but that’s all good!  The lake that we usually run round was flooded, so we did the off road course, which has a hill in it that you do 3 times, so is tougher.  It was also really muddy, sliding about on the muddy inclines!  As you can imagine my 5k time was pretty lousy – sandwiched between two 5/6 miles runs but I would rather do it this way than a solo 14 miles.  There was a also a bit of a wait while I got my barcode scanned, so I opted to pause my garmin and jog on the spot to I didn’t cramp up, as I still wanted an accurate measure of my pace over the whole run. Luckily a friend knew I had a long run to do afterwards so took mine to scan with his so I could head straight off!

The final part of the run was also fine, my pace was on or slightly slower than marathon pace and I felt strong and steady the whole way round.  I had a couple of new gels along the way, a Maxifuel lemon gel, which did the job but didn’t taste very nice, and a High5 Apple gel which was very good.  I need to stock up on gels again – I’m running very low and am having to resort to using ones given to me in goody bags which I’ve not had before!  As predicted, I did get to 14 miles a bit early due to running round the field before parkrun, so I thought it would be useful to finish there and walk the rest of the way back as a nice cool down.

When I got back, there was just enough time to have a quick shower and lunch before heading into London.  I had heard that the new London Marathon store had opened and to celebrate they were having a 26.2% off sale!  I was really tempted by this year’s VMLM adidas range (despite my mum saying I did NOT need yet more running gear!) and had my eye on a fleece and a couple of their tops.  The shop itself was a lot of fun to walk around as they have done it all up to celebrate the marathon, including a huge map of London on the ceiling with lights marking the route.  My favourite was the display of the past medals from 1981 to 2013!  There was also a new empty box with a red cushion, which will soon house the 2014 medal.

I did splash out a bit and bought a fleece, long sleeved running top and a tank top – all for a bit of extra motivation as to what I’m aiming for this April!

Finally in the afternoon I took a walk along the Embankment.  It was great walking over Tower Bridge (mile 12 of the marathon!) and I got some good photos as it was such a nice day.  I walked back past the Tower of London then followed a bit of the Thames Path towards St Pauls Cathedrals, and finally got the train back when it started to get dark.  I think all the walking did me good as I was not aching the next day!