Early Morning Run

The idea of today's run was to run slower than last weeks 18km but still at a good pace.  This was my last long run before the half, I'll be slowing it down from here on in.

Normally I would run between 10am and 11am on a Saturday morning but as my wife was off to Dublin today I needed to get the run in earlier.  I had my porridge and honey for breakfast, which is what I like to eat before embarking on a long run, drove to the shop and bought an energy drink.  After a few drinks drove to work where the run would begin.  The radio was talking about beautiful weather, blue skies in Dublin but outside in Carlow the fog was everywhere and still hasn't lifted as I write this.

At 8:35am I left the car park with my head fully awake but my legs seemingly still asleep and a little sore.  This was going to be a long run.  I have four road routes that I like to run around the town and today I decided instead of doing a loop 3.5 times maybe I should run them all and see how far that is. By combining the routes there would only be one stretch of about 750m that I would run twice.

The first 8km were far from comfortable, unlike Thursday's run but I battled through.  It wasn't until 14km that my legs started to respond and feel that they were up to the task.  I reached the front of my office and the Garmin showed 17.83km, not bad.  I ran a little further to hit the 18km and walked back to the car to stretch.  I felt the run, although tough, was at a comfortable enough pace, a pace of 05:33 min/km, which would give me a sub 2 hour half, happy days.  I was 1 minute and 24 seconds slower than last week, not much.

With the IT band problem in late December and a half training schedule that was changed almost every week I didn't think I'd be at the stage I'm at now.  Looking forward to Lisbon now.  Recovery run tomorrow, all going well.