Most of my midweek runs since 1st Dec have been 3 mile lunchtime plods at circa 10 min/miles, simply to stretch out my legs. This is certainly improving my suppleness, but until Sunday I'd never really tested myself at anything above snail pace.
So my brainwave was to enter a relatively flat Half - Wokingham - yesterday, and try to push myself at 2 hour - 9:09 min/mile pace for as long as possible. Following a painfully stiff warm up of a couple of miles, I lined up next to the 2 hour pacers with their yellow flags sticking up high into the air. One mile in to the race and my legs stiffened up again (the norm these days) and I had to let the pacers go - losing maybe 40 seconds on them over the next 2 miles. At this point I thought it was going to be a nightmare race, but eventually, after three miles or so, the legs started working again and I set about catching up the two yellow spots in the distance. Caught the pacers up by mile 5 or 6 and stayed with them for a relatively comfortable few miles until just before mile 10 when my legs went "pop" - like a blown engine, here one moment, gone the next! It was all I could do not to walk, but I shuffled tortoise-like up the seemingly never-ending long ramp over the motorway. After that, I managed to get into a (painful) rhythm and dragged myself over the line in 2:01:30.
Although a very modest time, this was much faster than my two HMs in 2018 (2:10 and 2:22), and so I have to take encouragement from this. It seems rather a crazy idea to be trying to complete the West Highland Way Race from such a poor position back in December, but it's certainly a huge magnetic force driving me on. I've been getting up to run on the WHW every 2 or 3 weeks, and having long, slow time on legs, which should definitely help me keep going - however slowly - towards the latter parts of the race.
Obviously I won't be able to push the pace on the D33, which is less than 3 weeks away now. So I'll go as steadily as possible up to Banchory, hoping to delay the "pop" as long as possible. Last year was a miserable 7 hours 2 minutes, and I would be very keen to see a "6" rather than a "7" at the front of my result. Fingers crossed!
