I'm not sure that this photo requires any additional comment, to be honest. Well, I never really did do brevity, so.... Yesterday, we ran twenty miles. It was a filthy day: throwing it down with rain and blowing a gale. I think the only other people we saw out running were also marathon runners, driven by their training schedules and their own personal madness. People like us, in other words.
And yet, you know what? I actually quite enjoyed that.
Oh sure, running that far (4 miles further than I've ever run before) brings a particular set of challenges: it's physically stressful on the body, taking a particular toll on my left hip; no matter how much I pad it (I wear a sweatband around my ankle), the brace I use to hold up my dropping left foot leaves me pretty swollen and bruised; you need to have a refuelling strategy to try to make sure that you don't this "the wall" when you run out of readily accessible carbohydrate... but I think the biggest challenge is mental rather than physical. It's pretty hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer size of the task in front of you and quite how long it's going to take you.
Still, we managed. We also saw enough wildlife - including a first duckling of the season, lapwings flying acrobatically, a heron, some beautiful ducks, swans, geese and, um, rats - along the way as we ran along the river Trent and the Nottingham and Beeston canal that conversation wasn't much of a problem.
It was alright. The end is also in sight now: the marathon is now less than 4 weeks away and, although our longest run is yet to come (22 miles this coming Sunday), last week saw my training mileage peak at a little over 45 miles. My midweek run this week drops from 11 miles last week down to a much more reasonable sounding 6 miler.
Once the small matter of Sunday's 22 miles is out of the way....we're tapering down all the way to London, baby!
Although, to be honest, my legs were pretty sore today as I hobbled round a gentle 5-miler. Marathons, eh? Pfff. Time consuming.
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