Marathon build up week 11 - Golden Ball 20

The first half of this week was mainly about easy and steady miles, as I was feeling the effects of the previous week of hard training - especially the back-to-back park run and 24 mile weekend effort.

I made the most of the bank holiday and ran earlier on the Monday morning, with an easy hour, and then had a much needed massage in the evening.

I was running on tired legs and wary of pushing it too hard before my body was ready to go again, so I opted against any hard session on the Tuesday. I continued to run fairly easy on Wednesday, but doubled up to get extra mileage in.

My first proper session of the week was the tempo run on Thursday. It was the third week out of three of our 10 mile tempo efforts, and as targeted we have managed to get a little bit quicker each week. Having completed the previous efforts in 55:11 and 54:11, this week's I got around in 53:44. I was really pleased with this run, especially as I hit a few obstacles this time around - getting unlucky with the traffic at one mile, and shortly afterwards had a bit of an altercation with four chavs purposely blocking the path on their bikes! Having forced my way through them, I put in a bit of an effort for the next mile as they followed after me giving me abuse 😏😂

I ran easy on Friday morning as a recovery, and then a steady hour long run home from work on Friday evening.

I had an easier day on Saturday with a 7 mile jog at lunch time, opting to rest up a bit as I was booked in to do the Golden Ball 20 mile road race on Sunday as my final long run.

I was caught between a rock and a hard place on the Sunday somewhat, as I was conscious of the fact that I am getting ever closer to the real race day now, and didn't want to race this one too hard. I wanted to turn it into a hard long run, which is the reasoning behind me doing the race as opposed to another solo long run, but I didn't want to use too much energy. In the end, I opted to stick to roughly 6 minute miles throughout. I ran the first few miles with Matt Lalor and Mark Leadbeatter, and we grew through the field through the opening miles. By 7 miles Matt pushed on and flew through the second half to take a well deserved and thoroughly convincing win. I was happy enough with my run out, recording 2:01:04 (6:04 pace).

It is another box ticked off and another step closer to the real thing in three weeks time. I have one more real week of training planned now, before I start to ease back, which fits in fairly nicely with Molly's return from her American adventure this week. 

Total mileage for the week: 87

Average pace for the week (m/pm): 6:24

Total mileage for the month of August: 383.5

Total mileage so far this month (September): 40

Total mileage for 2017: 2541

Average miles per day 2017: 10.37