Week Eleven

Monday - 8 miles
Tuesday - 8 miles
Saturday - 4 hours (22 miles)

Sunday - 1 hour 30 minutes (8.5 miles)

It's been a busy week!  On Monday I went out for a quick run after work - the aim was to get all my mileage done early in the week so I could have a rest before the weekend.  It worked quite well - I ran it at marathon pace, doing an extended Thames loop.   I'm running out of interesting views to take photos of on that loop - I feel like I've taken all of them - then I spotted this rather lovely view of Tower Bridge from Old Billingsgate.

On Tuesday night I went to Midnight Runners for the first time in weeks - it's been really tough to get there because of work, but I had a late start on Wednesday so I thought I'd take advantage.  It was a lovely evening and nice to see some familiar faces!  If you click on the photo and look closely I'm standing slightly right of centre....

Photo credit: Máté Fülöp

It was the usual circuit with plenty of body weight exercises and a quite ridiculous number of squats!  I took this photo on the way home, halfway across Millenium Bridge as it was looking really beautiful with the full moon.  

For the next two days my legs ached and I couldn't understand why as I felt I hadn't really run all that far.   I was even struggling to get up stairs... I started to wonder whether I had somehow picked up some sort of weird delayed injury.... The penny finally dropped on Thursday that it was probably all the squats. Oh yeah... that'd do it.  Needless to say they have probably strengthened some muscle that needed a bit of work so I'm glad I did it!

I had the rest of the week off then went back to Horsham on Friday night.  I went into my room to collect my kit to find this awaiting me:

My mum had stayed in my room during the week and laid out all my kit like this, I burst out laughing and called the assembled company for a good giggle.  Being bonkers obviously runs in the family!

Friday was World Sleep Day - I know this because there was an event at work with lots of info about getting a good night's sleep.  This amused me greatly!   I'd been advised by George back when we set up my training programme that I should try to replicate the conditions of the actual ultra as closely as possible during training, and that included one run where I had to get up and run at 3am....

The lovely Toby had volunteered to come and accompany me as I was a bit nervous about roaming the country lanes of Sussex on my own at 3am, and to take the sting out of it he had booked us into a rather lovely hotel.  It was quite sad having to go to bed early but we did and after 4 hours sleep, the alarm went off at 2am.  When I picked up my phone to turn it off, I found this text:

 

which really made me smile!  Thanks Giulia!  We got up and I went through the motions - preparing electrolytes, eating porridge, putting my kit on.  I called room service and they brought me coffee at 2.45am - they must've thought I'd lost my marbles.  Toby had brought his folding bike and was busily getting ready also.  I'd planned a route and we were ready to set off.  Toby had bought special mega-watt lights for the bike and I was all kitted out in head torch and flashing back light.  It was actually kind of spooky running at that time.  We ran the first 5km listening to the sounds of the countryside... we saw bunnies, heard owls and saw deer run across the road ahead of us.  Later an enormous rat scurried alongside us for 100m or so.  It was pretty amazing.

A couple of hours passed.  I'd downloaded a cheesy 80's playlist for when the going got tough so we put that on and stormed along blasting out Kylie, Abba and Rick Astley.  Music always helps get through my marathons and it cheered us both up.  We got into Horsham proper by the time it was getting light.  Toby was completely amazing - keeping me company, putting up with my rambling, and not objecting to going on a four hour cycle ride at 2 o'clock in the morning.  What a star.

We were at the 30k mark when I realised that the route I'd planned was about to start featuring some pretty beastly hills.  I failed to take any photos that actually capture that in any way but trust me it was pretty rough.  There was a lot of walking involved...  I discovered later there had been 269m of ascent - almost all of it in the last 5k.  Go me and my amazing route planning skills!

After four hours we were back at the hotel and we had a lovely bath, an amazing breakfast and an hour's nap.  I had another hour's sleep that afternoon, but was still feeling pretty knackered by the evening.  That night I looked at my Garmin and I had done almost 50,000 steps.  I'd normally go and walk round a bit to get a nice round number but I was so exhausted that I just couldn't be bothered!  Instead I went to bed early and had an epic 10-hour kip!

Sunday morning I just needed to do 1.5 hours so a nice trail run was in order.  I set off on my usual route into the forest but as I headed into the normally deserted part, I could see a load of vans parked in the field.  As I got closer I discovered there was a motocross event happening.  It was busier than I could ever imagine somewhere so isolated being and incredibly LOUD!

Even once I got into the normal bit of the forest I could still hear the revving of engines!  It has dried out a lot since I last ran this route and was as pretty as ever - thoroughly enjoyed myself today.  Lots more hills but because it was so short it only added up to 121 metres of ascent this time.

 Finally a bit of stats geekery...  My Garmin keeps track of how many times I use my trainers so that I know when they're coming to the end of their useful life.  Astonishingly, this is the record for my new black ultra trainers, which I've had less than a month.  180km in six runs - wow!  They're earning their keep!

 

I also found this which shows how many steps and km I've done over the past 4 weeks.  500km a month, 21,800 steps a day on average.  I feel like I will never see numbers like this ever again!  I only have one more week of really hardcore training coming up before I start tapering off so I thought I would share!

People have continued to donate very generously to my cause - thank you all so much.  I'm delighted to report that I'm only £270 away from reaching my target with five weeks to go before the ultra.  Every donation counts and so please do consider donating if you can, the page is here: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/marathonmadness.  Much appreciated! xxx