This weekend I had to complete the last 20 mile run before I start the tapering down process. As I was bored of running around the Guildford area, we went down to Gemma’s parent’s home in Havant for the weekend. This meant Gemma was able to cycle alongside me whilst carrying a big backpack of drinks – a mix of Lucozade and water. It turned out to be a pretty good run along the coast and it seemed to go by fairly fast. For the majority of the run I managed to keep the 12 km/h pace but that dropped rapidly towards the end as I ran out of puff. I made a big mistake by straying from the route Gemma had planned which end up taking us in circles and down a stony beach which was like running through mud. Gemma ended up coming off her bike and I knew if I stopped i’d never get started again so I had to just run past her whilst some passer-bys helped her up. She did super well to cycle 20 miles with a loaded backpack though!
We completed the 20 miles in 2h50m which is a fairly good time, one that i’d hope would translate into a marathon of around 3h30m. If I had kept the pace up over the final few miles it would have been a lot faster so i’m hoping on the big day it’ll all come right. The next few weeks i’ll be reigning in the big runs – maybe one more 10 mile run the weekend before – with the aim being to just keep things ticking over.
Thats it! All the big training runs done!
