I gave up route planning last night and watched highlights of the Vuelta instead. Want to know how much pain those guys go through when they are racing up 7% slopes at the end of a three week tour. Go running. You'll never be able to ride hard enough to simulate that pain riding a bike, but run for far enough and it hurts.
I used my 23 mile route with a detour to Five Lanes End on the way back that brought it up to 26.6 miles. Set-off at 5.15am with the aid of my head torch which meant that I went at a slower, and hopefully more sustainable, rhythm. That was all very good until nettle ally at the far end of Hackwood Park. The b*&&ing stingers are harder to dodge in the dark and so my legs were glowing brighter than the head torch by the time I reached the A339 and the start of the serious hills. The twinge in my left knee was there, as it had been last week, every time I tried to put in a low stride. It was OK as long as I picked up my leg properly but that's the leg with the dodgy hamstring
Still, its techniques like this that these training runs are supposed to develop. I learned how to pedal properly riding silly distances, now I'm learning to run properly by the same method.
I think I've hit on the right method for me to feed whilst running (that's another problem with upping the distance. Up to four hours I can go on water and a few jellybabies but beyond that hunger-knock beckons). At about 13 miles, at the top of the long drag out of Bradley I slowed to a walk, unhitched my bum bag, extracted a Tunnocks caramel wafer, and munched it at a brisk walk, returning to a run as soon as I'd put the last piece in my mouth. It will lose me a bit of time, but I can't eat and run, I've tried and its messy and horrible. I did the same again at about 21 miles, in the desolate shade of Five Lanes End. By then I was an automaton, lifting the legs and trying to ignore the pain. I did so quite well until the steep steps of the railway bridge with just over a mile to go, when everything went a bit wobbly.
I reached the marathon mark just under my best for a mostly off-road marathon but was still a couple of minutes over my target time for the run. It's the first time I've run the marathon distance in training, which sounds impressive until you realise that it was still nearly 19 miles short of my actual race distance. That's as long as many people's longest run before their marathon. That's a very grim though on which I don't wish to dwell. Instead I will hold out hope that I can find that eternal pace that true trail runners must have, slow but never-ending, before December, and do the event in style.
