A faster week

My running has been a little speedier this week, although my cycling was much slower than usual... This was the week of my last long run before the half marathon I'm training for, so it was a bit of a taper week.

I started with an evening run on Monday, which was a recovery run after Saturday's horrible 12 miles. I expected to be tired and slow, but for some reason I was a lot faster than I'd assumed. It was just 3.1 miles, but my average pace was 8.36 min/miles. The previous Monday's recovery run (also 3.1 miles) was run at 9.17 pace, so this was a huge improvement.

On Tuesday I had time for a bike ride, but it all went wrong when I had to struggle home with a flat tyre - see previous post. Pants.

Wednesday was an early morning run, and I did 4 miles while my family slept, at 8.53 pace. This was particularly pleasing because I ran great splits, getting faster with each mile: 9.14; 9.02; 8.50; 8.27. It was also great that I can now experience the sunrise at this time, whereas a couple of weeks ago it would have been pitch black outside.















Then on Friday afternoon, I had to fit in my last long run, as I wouldn't have time at the weekend. I was hoping for a better run than last week's 12 miles, which I struggled for most of and lost all my confidence in running long. On that post I had a whole lot of supportive comments urging me not to worry and that I would do better in the race. Thank you so much for those! You were probably right, as I had a much better attempt on Friday.

I ran 10 miles in 1h32m35s, which is one of my fastest times for 10 miles. In sharp contrast to last week, I actually struggled to go slowly enough - at the start anyway. My first 2 miles were sub 9 mins, and the first 5 miles were all around 9 mins. I slowed down for the last 5 miles, and ended up with 9.12 pace overall. Very pleased with that! And I felt much better too, and could enjoy the run.

On Saturday I was out all day working as an examiner, and on Sunday we had to visit Pete's family for lunch. I didn't have much time in the morning, but squeezed in a 2.2 mile run, just for the fun of it! perhaps the fact that we were in a hurry made me run faster too, as I averaged 8.25 m/m pace - my fastest (if shortest) run for a few weeks.

So in total, that was slightly fewer miles than the last couple of weeks, at 19.3.

This week I am going to keep things just ticking over for the Half which is on Sunday! Can't wait!