A wet week.

So summer has gone AWOL and the hot weather we had a few weeks ago is a distant memory. This last week was wet, windy and cool. Anyone who saw tv pictures of the jubilee celebrations on the Thames will recognise this description.

Dressed for the British summer

Anyway, I managed to get a decent week of running in, despite the weather and half term holidays. Because of the Queen's jubilee, Monday and Tuesday were public holidays, which meant Pete was home too. I took advantage of this on Tuesday morning, and ran 10 miles while he looked after the kids.

I set off planning to run about 7 miles, but felt ok so I kept extending the distance until it seemed silly not to round it up to 10. This was my longest run since the Half Marathon on 4th March. I'm not training for anything specific at the moment, but I want to start building my long runs and overall mileage gradually over the next 6 months, to help prepare for marathon training in the winter. Such long term planning is tricky though, and it's hard to motivate myself to run long, as I think I've got plenty of time to put it off. I just want to start marathon training with my legs well used to long distances.

Anyhoo, that 10-miler was pretty good, and I averaged 9 min/miles, which I'm very happy with.

As Pete went back to work, it was harder to get time to myself, and it's the bike rides that get dropped when I'm lacking in free time. I got up early on Thursday and Friday mornings to sneak in some short runs, and had to battle gale force wind on Friday! It wasn't too bad though, as I enjoyed some tailwind as well as headwind, which felt great!

It occured to me last week that I haven't had much variety in my running recently. I've been focusing on increasing mileage, and forgotten sessions such as intervals and hills. In fact I haven't done anything like that for months, probably not since I ran with a club in December.

So on Sunday I decided to mix it up a bit. I jogged half a mile, then ran fast half a mile, 5 times in total. My first mile was way too fast, and after most fast runs I had to stop for a while to catch my breath before I started jogging again. It felt good to run fast though, and I wondered when I had last made my legs turn over so quickly.

This run brought my weekly miles to 22.37 miles - also the highest mileage since the beginning of March.

So I will be aiming to keep the miles up, remember to add some intervals, and keep battling the weather - the forecast is grim for the rest of the month...

Winter coats and wellies in June