Saturday, November 17, 2012

It Was Only A Slight Miscalculation...

Okay, I mucked it up big time. I was intending to run about twenty miles today. A reasonable increase from my recent longest run of about fifteen. However, marking up a twenty kilometre outward route followed by twenty kilometres back along the Cotswold Way does not, in any branch of mathematics I'm familiar with, equate to twenty miles. It does, in fact, equate to almost 25 miles. And, here's a top runners tip, when attempting a 25 miles run do not, under any circumstances, run the first half on a twenty mile pace schedule....

I set off from the Air Balloon car park, following the Cotswold Way south for about a mile before heading inland on a meandering route which finally met back up with the Cotswold way some twenty kilometres later at the Haresfield Beacon. It was as I approached the Beacon that it suddenly dawned on me that I wasn't actually going to be running twenty miles. All of five seconds after that, it struck me that I was going to be in a bit of pickle in an hour or two. My pace was too fast for the actual distance I was about to run.

And, as foretold in the prophecy, an hour or two later I was crawling. The miles seemed to stretch out to infinity (and a little beyond if the truth be told). I eventually made it back to the car some 4 hours and 35 minutes from whence I had started. I was, as they say in the trade, a little bit pooped.

On the plus side there was no sign of cramp and had I set off at a more sensible pace for the actual distance I ran I think I would have been pretty solid. All bodes well for being able to support, as promised, a friend whose going to run the entire Cotswold Way next weekend. I feel a lot more confident now.

In all I covered 40km with about 950m of ascent. All in all a good days training...

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