Weekly Mileage: 87.5 miles
Mileage: 16 miles in 1 hour 50 minutes
Long Sunday runs are pretty much my favourite run of the week! I love them. Today I had a great day and a great run. The beautiful weather of the last couple of weeks had disappeared and I left the house to a wintery day of heavy rain and strong winds. I picked Dan up and we headed off to Craiglockhart tennis centre to meet up with the rest of the club. It was still blowing and raining hard when we got there and setting off I wished I had brought some gloves.
Over the first mile Dan and I moved away from the others pretty quickly and we were soon alone as we followed the Water of Leith path heading towards Balerno. We both complained about the weather and wondered why we hadn’t brought gloves, but we were soon into a rhythm and running well. In fact we were going at a pretty impressive pace, the first few miles were all around 7 minutes a mile and under, which was faster than I thought I could go, but I was pretty comfortable and happy. My legs were fairly loose and felt strong, which was great after running so many miles and three hard training sessions during the week. I did wonder if our early pace would cost me later on, but I didn’t care too much as I was just happy to be running at a good steady pace.
We got to mile 6 at Balerno in 42 minutes, maintaining our early pace, which was great, however, miles 7 and 8, as we head up to the reservoir, are pretty steep and with the wind blasting into our faces head on we inevitably slowed. It was here, for the first time, that my hamstrings started to tighten and my lower back began to niggle again. It started to feel a little bit of a struggle, but I had the bit between my teeth, so I decided not to back off and I could see that Dan still had plenty of running in him. Dan hadn’t done this run before so he was reliant on me to show him the way, so for his sake I felt I had to keep pushing. We reached the top of the last hill and turned toward the Harlow Resevoir, hitting the halfway mark of a 16 mile run in 57 minutes. Not bad.
The run back was a lot easier than the run out, as we had the wind at our back for the most part and the gradient was on our side too. By mile 10 I did begin to feel tired, I was soaked through, sore in both legs, my lungs were feeling it too, but it just felt great running, so much better than my 14 mile run last Sunday. I’d almost forgotten how beautiful this run was too slipping between the reservoirs, snaking through the forests and along the country roads, past the farm fields and even in the wind and the rain it was glorious to be outdoors.
When we got back on to the Water of Leith for the last couple of miles we cranked up the speed a bit. I am quite certain we were pushing each other a little, testing each other’s speed and endurance, but we both seemed happy with that. Our last mile along the canal disappeared in 5 minutes and 55 seconds, a great way to finish the run. We did the last 8 miles in 53 minutes and 1hour 50minutes for the whole 16 miles, an average of 6minutes and 54seconds per mile. It was much faster than I had hoped for and much more comfortable than I had expected. After a frustrating week of trying to find speed in training sessions it felt great to feel back to normal.
We both felt pretty strong and fresh after we finished. We’ve got 18-20 miles to run next Sunday and I think we’ll be okay for that. I wonder if we’ll be as quick.
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