The plan said 15 miles for today, but we decided to go for 18 (ended up being 19 in the end). We decided to do two laps of our new found route so that we could leave some water and try out a gel half way round.
The good thing about this new route is that the first couple of miles is down hill, so you can ease yourself in gently. My legs were feeling ok and we set off slow and steady. I have come to the realisation that I can't get into these long runs either physically or mentally until I've run about 6 miles. I am a complete mard arse and full of negativity until I reach this point. Poor Bozza is getting wise to this and senses that I will respond to him with one word answers!
We got round the first lap with relative ease and stopped at our fuelling station (a bottle of water and an energy gel buried under a pile of rocks). I necked the weird, thick, gloopy, slightly unpleasant energy gel in the hope that it would make the next 9.5 miles a breeze. What it actually did was give me awful stomach cramp and make me want to barf!
By the time we'd got to 12 miles, it wasn't my legs I was worried about, it was the intense hunger I was feeling right in the pit of my stomach. When we got to 13 miles, it occurs to me that we've already run a half marathon. When we got to about 16 miles, it starts to hurt but I aint stopping now. Alex had pulled ahead of me, giving me something to chase!
He slowed down to wait for me and asked me how far we'd got to go. I looked at my Garmin and it said we'd done 18.7 miles. We speed up and push on to the finish.
I didn't feel too bad when we walked through the front door, but within about 10 minutes I was freezing cold, shaking and my hands had turned blue! Something tells me I need to eat something fairly quickly and have a brew, God I need a brew, brew NOW!!!
Rest day tomorrow? Bozza he say YES!!!
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Youre doing sooooo well. Well done. Ive read every post. Youre ace! Yeha! Never give up. xxx
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