Last long run

Last week was hard. Hard to fit my training in, hard to make sure Frank was getting the attention & time from us that he deserves, I was up early every day and I am well known to be incredibly grumpy when I'm tired.

I ran on Monday - did my planned 35 minutes. Then on Tuesday I was meant to do 2x4 miles at 9 minute mile pace with 5 minutes recovery. I didn't do it but planned to do the session on Wednesday. I thought I'd run home from work & fit it in then. I can't remember now why that didn't work out but I ended up not running. By Thursday I was irritated and angry with myself for not doing the planned session & I was due to do intervals. So I ran from home to Pride Park (3 miles). Did the interval session (5x3 minutes at 7.30 minute miles with 90 seconds recovery) and then ran home. It wasn't what was on the plan but it was the best I could do.

Yesterday I ran 12 miles. Flino came with me to be my pacemaker - he's brilliant at running almost perfect splits. Compared to last week's 11 miler yesterday's run was a breeze! We ran up through Mackworth, onto the cycle track to Mickleover and then down the old railway track to Etwall, once we'd done 6 miles we turned round and came back again.

The first 3.5 miles are a steady uphill so I had to work hard at keeping to my pace. Once we got on the railway path it flattened out & we ran along having a conversation about great it will be when Frank is big enough to come out running with us. I didn't have my watch on, I wanted to just run for 2 hours without thinking about pace, miles or time.

We reached the halfway point and I was feeling pretty good. Flino did a great job of keeping me motivated and the time seemed to be flying by. I had a wobble around 10 miles the end seemed to be just too far away but other than that I managed. I felt tired, of course, at the end but much better than I did at the end of last weeks 11 miles.

I ate some soup when I got home, had a shower and then went to sleep for an hour. Later on I made Cottage Pie - it tasted amazing by the time I got to eat it. So I had 2 portions. And a Magnum. The week didn't seem so hard after all.