W7KW#3 - Long Run

Plan for last weekends run called for 13 miles at my marathon pace + 15s per mile (approx 10m 25s or 6m 31s per km). For various reasons, I didn't get a chance to go out for a run until this evening, which isn't really good enough, but that's life.

I'd been out for a cycle at lunch as well, but was determined to get at least 10 miles in this evening, ideally beating my 1hr 50m non-stop run last week and \ or it's 11.25 mile distance. Ideally, I'd run the full 13 miles or at least 20km if possible.

Set off deliberately slow to try and achieve these aims and thankfully did. Really started to struggle (mentally more than physically) after 40 mins or so. Really tried to play mind games with myself to spur myself on - the one I settled on was splitting the run into 3 x 40 minute chunks:

1. first "easy" one - knew I could easily do the time \ distance - absolutely no challenge
2. second "tough" one - tough in the sense it's be the most boring section. It starts getting tougher, but been there, done it all before.
3. third "goal" one - the last 40 mins which was where the sessions goals are - getting used to being on the feet for a long time.

Made it into the final section and was starting to get tired, despite the slower pace. Started counting down the minutes and eventually got to my previous time PB - though still a bit of distance wise. Figured at this point I still was good for the full distance (or at least the 20km), but bang on the 2hr mark I lost all energy (or was it willpower).

Still, quite happy with the run. Ran through some nice areas of Cambridge that I hadn't seen before - Claire College in particular, very nice at night. Can't find a pic online but I'll defo be going that way again.

Overall done 18.57km in 2hrs 01m (avg. 6m 31s per km - bang on target).