A high mileage week

I think last week was the most miles I've ran in a 7 day period before... ever... and wow, did my legs feel it!

Admittedly, 27.4 miles is not considered a high weekly mileage to many folk I know, now. In fact, 27.4 miles IN ONE GO might not be considered all that far, haha. But for me, it's a pretty epic week. In all fairness, it ought to have been something closer to 17 or 18 miles, but I shifted my weekly long run about a bit, so that the rubbish Sunday 10 miler I did fell into the same 7 days as Friday night's 10 mile run with Bob.

Friday - I went to Linlithgow canal after work, to run a slow and steady 10 miles with Bob and his dog Moss - 5 miles into a headwind, then turn around, and 5 miles back with the wind helping us out. He largely seemed on a mission to not let me walk much at all, and I found it tough going. We slowed the pace down substantially at points, just to try and keep me running, but although I took a few small walk breaks, in general I ran most of the way. The thing is, though, it was very slow. I compared the time it took me to run 10 miles on my own on Sunday, where I walked LOADS, and it really wasn't all that much faster. :( I need to keep training going to try and get faster with less walking, but it's somewhat demoralising at times. Bob was very patient with me - at about 6.5 miles I had this sudden thought that as tired as I was feeling right now, in 5 weeks' time I'd stll have the same distance again, to go. It had taken me around 1 hr 27 to get that far, and even assuming I'd be able to run a second half a race without slowing down (I never have yet) then a 2 hr 54 half marathon would be the slowest of all three I'll have done - you're not supposed to become a worse runner the more running you do, surely? So, I kind of got a bit overemotional with myself, plodding along that canal path, and would have absolutely stopped to slowly walk the 3½ miles back to the start, had Bob not been there to encourage me on. Granted, once I got that blip out of the way, I was back to the usual whinging 'are we nearly there yet' type of running companion, haha, but Bob only threatened to throw me into the canal once, to give him his dues. :) 10.1 miles, 2 hrs 17.

Saturday, I woke with heavy legs, and a sense of foreboding about the run I was supposed to be doing that day. I decided I would go there dressed to run, and see what happened. :) This was a run and party organised by the Race Director of the Fling ultra marathon, an excuse to use up the leftover bottles of prosecco from the post-race goody bags. Like people need an excuse, hehe. He'd found a nice 3 mile loop to run at Castle Semple, and over 30 people had turned up to run various numbers of laps. I chose to just run the one lap, in the end, as my legs were tired enough as it was, and my mileage had been pretty high. I ran with David Meldrum, who wanted a slower lap (I gave him that, lol) - and we had a chat as we hit the course. It was pretty undulating, with one particularly nasty wee hill in the middle, but we mostly walked the inclines and tried to run the rest. I think I did the 3 miles in 40 minutes, which isn't TOO bad given the challenging surface (especially a horrid section of dodging tree roots), the hills, and the tired heavy legs.

I rewarded my heavy week of running by getting completely sloshed at the post-run barbeque and party at John's house afterwards. But to be fair, I'm not sure when was the last chance I got to drink stupid amounts of alcohol and chat with a large group of completely awesome people. Met loads of new people, and caught up with lovely folk I don't see enough, and ended the night collapsed happily (drunkly) in the wee tent that Helen and John had loaned me (and, thankfully, put up!) - while the party raged on outside, and the occasional downpour of rain hammered on the ceiling of the tent. It was a rather great night, all told.... the raging hangover of doom the next morning was substantally LESS great. :)

So, Sunday was a write-off, exercise-wise, and actually Monday ended up being the same, due to random work circumstances and the cancellation of pencilled-in badminton plans. Tuesday (yesterday), I took the day off work to get a load of important chores done, and I was so busy through the day that once again no exercise happened (except for walking about 5 miles around town doing my various tasks while the car was in the garage for its MOT) - so, we reach Wednesday, after three 'rest' days, and I am most DEFINITELY running this evening. UltraBob is working away from his home in the area today, so he suggested we run on one of 'my' routes. Not sure how to tell him I rarely run the same route twice, near me (what was I saying about structure...?), but I guess I'll wing it, later on..... Maybe 4 or 5 miles. We'll see. x